 The National Union of Students had a very large travel company at the time with charter flights all over the world.They wanted to expand their operations domestically and so went to various regional sales managers of British Railways to develop special fares for holders of NUS cards.These were usually an allocated number of seats on specified weekend trains but they were very successful and Paul Connellan, who was the Travel Company General Manager, went to the British Railways Board with a proposal to allow a general discount based on the NUS card.