Eurostar - prebook or not?
 

When you travel as I do (several months at a time, on the move for all of it) it is difficult to prebook things like accommodation, Eurostar etc because I can never be absolutely certain exactly which day I'll be anywhere. Yes I plan fairly detailed itineraries, but I tend to regard them as things to depart from as much as to adhere to. (The theory being that at least with an itinerary, any decision to vary it is a better informed one than if I had no plan at all).

Hence my question: is it possible - and would you recommend - turning up at the London Eurostar terminal on a weekday in September, hoping to pick up 2 tickets to Paris at a reasonable price? Or would you advise me to commit myself to a date and prebook?

Last time (travelling in the opposite direction, Paris-London) I compromised between the 2 options. Efforts to prebook before I left home, yielded only prices I wasn't prepared to pay. About a week before I was due to cross I called in to a travel agent in Chartres & she was able to get me a ticket for 1/3rd of the price I'd been able to find on the internet 6-8 weeks earlier.

I could hope to repeat this serendipitous experience I suppose, but I'd be interested in hearing the views of other more experienced travellers on this forum. Thanks.

Your earlier experience would be unusual - usually the farther ahead you book the better the fares. Much like airfares - the best deals have limited availability and sell out. The more flexible w/ dates and times the better chance of getting a cheap fare.

Last minute or walk-up fares will usually be very high.

Eurostar organise their pricing in the way airlines do, at any rate on flights between really major cities.

Most people booking within a week or so of travel are spending someone else's money on getting to a meeting they can't influence the timing of very much. So their company gets charged the most Eurostar can get away with. Between London and Paris, this often affects even weekend travel, since there's then a substantial "let's go to Paris for lunch tomorrow, darling" segment for whom £150 return each is still a lot cheaper than buying an inferior meal in London.

Occasionally, something goes wrong in the market, and some discounted fares go on sale at shortish notice. Never at the station or on the day, but advertised through newspaper promotions, or through specialist agencies - which is what you found.

My experience recently is that four weeks before travel tends to be the cutoff point, after which discount Eurostar prices are impossible to find. Others might have different experience. But don't even dream of leaving till the day of, or before, travel unless Eurostar adpots a totally different policy

Thanks for that tip, flanneruk. Eurostar won't except bookings more than 120 days out anyway, but based on your advice I'll leave it till 4-8 weeks out (by which time I'll have my airfares and car hire dates sorted anyway).