Credit: 2024 Rail EuropeCertain railways in Europe are well-known for their incredible views. What routes or trips should advisors know about — especially some that get clients out of the crowds?
I almost live on the train, I say — I travel almost 80,000 kilometers per year by train. And Switzerland is amazing in terms of train travel. I still love to travel here, even though I live here; it’s hard to focus on work when the scenery is passing by. I love to go from Bern to Montreux, which is near Lake Geneva. And it’s not a high-demand route.
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In Scotland, you might combine whiskey tasting with a train journey. In the south of Italy, there are lovely trains — from Naples to Syracuse, the coastal train route is absolutely amazing. I also love the Nordic countries; train travel up to Stockholm might mean seeing the Northern Lights out of the window.
And we see, specifically from the American market, that people are looking for [these types of routes]. They have seen London, Paris and Rome. All the boxes are ticked, and now they want to see Eastern Europe: Prague, Budapest, Stockholm and Copenhagen. They go to Amsterdam more, and to northern Germany. And it’s our job to make [these choices] more visible.
Is the sustainability of train travel driving any demand?
Sustainability means a lot to us. For the U.S. market, I’ll point to two things. First, even if the numbers are growing and demand is high out of the U.S., we still have a lot of educating to do, and advisors do, too. We have to explain what train travel in Europe means, because you cannot compare the Amtrak offering to the European rail offering. You have to explain what it means to travel high-speed from London to Paris, from Brussels to Paris. Many of these travelers are used to taking buses during European travel — that was more cost efficient, and they weren’t thinking as much about carbon footprint.
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Train travel is clean and the most sustainable mode of transport, but we know that when it comes to why someone chooses a specific mode of transport, sustainability is not in the top three. The top three criteria are price, safety and convenience. So, we are focusing mostly on convenience. We are a distribution platform, with no impact on price, and we don’t operate the trains, so we have no impact on safety. We do have a huge impact on convenience, by reducing the entry barrier and improving accessibility to every fare. And then, if we focus on this, we do have an impact on sustainability.
Then, [we can teach clients] that train travel is fast and reliable in Europe — such as London to Paris in two hours and 15 minutes, or Brussels to Amsterdam in one hour and 30 minutes. Travel distances and travel times by train cannot compare to flights and buses; Americans might think, “If I take a flight, it’s faster.” But not in Europe, where the airports are far from the city center and it takes four or six hours total to arrive.
And, adding more convenience, Rail Europe is now offering seat reservations for pass holders.
This was one of the biggest pain points, and one that has blocked people from buying passes. If you have the Eurail pass, for example, you feel free, but you need to understand that there are different systems in Europe. You can buy your pass in Germany, Switzerland or Austria, and you can board every train, even if you don’t have a seat. But there are closed systems, such as in Spain or France, that work like the airline industry; as in, you cannot even board the platform if you don’t have a reservation. If the train is full, and every seat is occupied, you cannot get in.
So, to avoid queueing for hours to get a seat reservation, we now have this functionality embedded in our booking environment for B2B and B2C users. This is a huge part of improving convenience.
Additionally, we’re trying to get every European rail operator into our system. We’ve added Austrian Railways, and Austria is an important connecting dot to Eastern European destinations such as Hungary or Prague. It’s a huge step to have the full OBB (Austrian Railways) in our system.
What rail systems are in your sights?
We still have some spots in Eastern Europe we need. We don’t cover Croatia point-to-point yet, or Portugal or Finland, but we’re working on it. We see demand changing, and we want to meet that. So, we are taking customer feedback directly to our product roadmap.
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Publish date : 2024-04-20 07:00:00
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