FEATURE: The revolution in booking rail (Apr 30)

While air bookings continue to fall, those for rail go on increasing. ABTN looks at what is behind this rise in fortunes for the train companies

Amid the now familiar news this week of drops here, there and everywhere in air transactions, there was one figure which bucked the trend. The UK Guild of Travel Management Companies (GTMC), while reporting a 17% fall in air transactions by its members in the first quarter of 2009, also mentioned that rail bookings were up 14%.

Almost at the same time, Eurostar, the cross channel high speed rail service, said it was planning to expand the number of destinations for which passengers can buy seamless "through tickets."

The two things are not unconnected.

The last year or so has seen what amounts to a revolution in rail bookings for corporates. Philip Martin, head of marketing for Amadeus rail, said that "in the last six months, things have taken off."

This is not about the spread of the high speed rail network, almost wholly in continental Europe although quicker journeys clearly help. Nor is it about green issues, although again environmentally friendly trains also play a part.

The revolution is about the fact that TMCs and corporates can book rail so much more easily than in the past and the travel managers can capture the MI without fishing around for dozens of rail invoices and warrants.  

Two prime movers of this in the UK are the extraordinary growth of Evolvi and the appearance on GDS screen alongside air options of Eurostar's services between London and Paris and Brussels. A third will be the arrival on the GDS of domestic rail option in the UK. Evolvi has already teamed up with Amadeus to provide this service.

Evolvi is a simple to use booking engine, designed specifically for corporates, and is streets ahead of the cranking ELGAR system which required special training to use and which is now being phased out. The fact that Evolvi's revenue rose 47% in 2008 compared with 2007, tells its own story.

Something similar is happening on the continent. American Express launched its AX RailHub in Germany this year to provide a direct online booking portal for all trains in the country "at the lowest possible rate."

Kaveh Atrak

Kaveh Atrak, Amex's vp and general manager for central and northern Europe, said Germany was a country where rail is heavily used for business and where, in some places, trains had replaced the air service. "We set this concept up at the start of the year and it is now very easy to book rail with American Express.

"You can do it online, for which there is no transaction fee, go to our dedicated call centre in Cologne or go through your normal travel agency." Previously rail bookers had gone either directly through Deutsche Bahn, the German rail network, or the huge majority had used their travel agents, Mr Atrak said.

This new booking tool, launched last month capped a six-month period when Amex was dealing with an increasing number of rail bookings. It was a time when air bookings fell but rail bookings rose by 3-4%.

Amadeus's new GDS booking facilities for domestic rail has already been snapped by Sweden and the IT company is also in talks with both France and Germany. Amadeus signed a deal with the French network SNCF a year ago whereby its agents can book direct with the train company. This is working well, said Mr Martin. A similar arrangement has existed in Germany for about three years.

"It all goes through the main Amadeus reservation system that exists with most of the railways that we have," he said.

The bitty progress of easing the way rail is booked emphasises that the industry does not have any standard booking procedure like the far more advanced airline industry has had for years. It was the airlines, after all, which invented the GDss to facilitate passenger bookings. The railways were happy to stick to queues at stations.

This is now beginning to change. "We are providing a standard for booking rail," Mr Martin said.

Amadeus and others are also looking to finish off another problem in booking rail: multi-stage or cross border travel. Railteam, a consortium

Philip Martin

of seven major train operating companies was set up to tackle this very problem through building a common IT platform. This has run into technical problems over ticketing and is not making the progress that was envisaged. But the goal still remains.

This will see travellers from say Frankfurt able to buy one ticket for a journey to London. It already exists on France's TGV Lyria service where passengers can buy tickets from Paris to Geneva and other Swiss cities. But this one train. The problem seems to arise when more than one train is involved. It may be, as is often the case with train companies, that the technology is well ahead of the will.

Mr Martin said Amadeus can accomplish this technically but "the rail companies have to decide how it will be done."

But there is on the horizon, if not the cavalry, then at least some firm indications that rescue may be at hand. Passenger rail services will be de-regulated or liberalised within the EU next January. Anyone one will be able to run a train service in any country.

New entrants, as Mr Martin calls them, are already gearing up and the easiest to spot is Air France. The airline has been in talks with Veolia, a French transport company, and is taking advice from Travelport GDS. The industry rumour is that it plans to start a rival cross-channel service to Eurostar. (This may partly explain Eurostar's wish to get through tickets underway as soon as possible.)

The beauty, Mr Martin explains, is that the new entrants will start with a clean sheet. Veolia is already certain it will be able to do cross-border or rather cross train company traffic.

"The rail companies are going to have to look at how they distribute their tickets and how they get to their passengers. There is a difference of opinion on how this is going to work. We still need some standard set up. But we shall definitely be seeing changes from the new entrants," he said.