Travel Weekly Blog

I redeemed a friend's Eurostar vouchers against a group booking this weekend (four days in Ghent, since you ask) and two things about the process baffle me:

1. Eurostar sells 'paper' vouchers for phone and sales centre bookings, and 'online' vouchers for web bookings, effectively limiting the recipient to particular channels.



2. When you use 'paper' vouchers over the phone, you have to post them to Eurostar after booking. Remember how much posting things used to suck? Turns out it still does.

Vouchers shouldn't dictate how I book or require me to post them anywhere. If they do, a wad of cash marked 'spend this at X' begins to look like a kinder gift. And if that happens, Eurostar has gone from a guaranteed booking to one that's merely quite likely.

One voucher for all sales channels, please, and redeemable by a unique code. Comme John Lewis.

All that said, I'm still a big Eurostar fan: the full fare was less than £100 per person return, the lady who made my reservation was a pleasure to deal with, and for northern France and Belgium it blows flying out of the water.

Nathan Midgley, web producer