On 19 July, the Italian Competition Authority sanctioned Trenitalia S.p.A. with € 5 million for a grossly unfair commercial practice carried out through the company’s “motore orario”, (the telematics system for train schedule search, ticket information, booking and purchase available to customers on the www.trenitalia.com website, through the Trenitalia App for smartphones and tablets and at self-service ticket machines at train stations). As a matter of fact, the search results omitted numerous travel solutions with regional trains if the "all trains" search options (renamed "main solutions" during the investigation) was selected.
The ICA also ordered Trenitalia to publish a rectification declaration on all its ticket booking and purchase tools and forbade the company from continuing the ascertained unfair commercial practice.

Following the ICA’s incisive and complex intervention, Trenitalia revised the functioning of the “motore orario” to make it more complete and clear to the users, through the implementation of technical measures that the ICA deemed suitable to overcome the omissive and misleading nature of the censored commercial practice.

Since January 20th, 2018, after Trenitalia’s interventions, the search system seems finally able to offer consumers a much wider choice of travel and purchase combinations, equal to about 30% more travel solutions, also including regional trains which were previously not viewable to users who selected the "all trains" search option. The search results are now the same on all the search tools, i.e. the company’s website, the Trenitalia App and the self-service ticket machines.

This is a significant result for the benefit of consumers, who, as a result of the ICA’s enforcement activities, now have the possibility of making wider, more complete and informed purchase choices, in the context of technically sophisticated booking systems which are characterised by the use of algorithms.

Rome, 9 February 2018