One million travel bookings have been recorded on rail company National Express East Coast's website since it was redesigned seven months ago.

The site was developed by National Express East Coast in collaboration with Atos Origin and user-design specialist Flow Interactive, according to Computer Weekly.

It asserts that travel plans and bookings are simplified on the website, with other features including discounted prices, preferred reserved seating options, bicycle spaces and email notification for ticket availability.

"We brought specification and management of our online bookings system in-house so we could provide our customers with the website we felt they deserve - a real one-stop shop for their travel needs," Emma Passey, e-commerce manager at National Express East Coast, told the publication.

Passengers in both standard and first class are offered free Wi-Fi access between London and Scotland.

Atos Origin has been selected as a Worldwide IT partner of the Olympic Games in Beijing and recently announced that it successfully completed a technical rehearsal prior to the competition.

A recent Connect survey found that the two major concerns about outsourcing services like IT support were 'loss of control' (56 per cent) and 'budget over-runs' (43 per cent)