Eurostar is celebrating its 21st birthday this year and it has certainly grown up. In those two decades, rail has become the preferred mode of transport between London and both Paris and Brussels.
In the second quarter of 2015 to the end of June, the cross-channel rail operator carried 2.8 million passengers, a record number.
Business traffic is also booming. The company said in July that the number of Business Premier passengers carried on the service rose by 10% year on year in the second quarter. The company says that the increase in business traffic is strong in both directions.
We thought it would be a good time to look at how the company has fared over the past few years. Traffic and revenues have generally been increasing, as shown in the chart below.
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Note that this shows that traffic is always higher in the second half of the year, when leisure traffic is stronger but that revenues follow the opposite trajectory.
It will be interesting to watch what happens in the latter half of 2015 and early 2016. The company is introducing its new fleet of e320 trains by the end of the year while its existing fleet has been getting a refurbishment and will be redesignated as e300s — the numbers indicate the top speed in km/h.
The interior of the refurbished e300s was revealed by the company in July and is as shown below.
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Eurostar e300 interior
Photos of the new e320 interiors, designed by Pininfarina, are on a dedicated Eurostar website. The new trains will feature free WiFi and UK and Continental power sockets in all classes and will carry 900 passengers, compared with 750 now. This latter point, coupled with new routes to Amsterdam and year-round Lyon and Marseille services could see traffic and revenue climb higher still.