SKF global travel manager Mikael Holmyr is closer to conquering
one of his travel program’s biggest logistical challenges: booking foreign rail
tickets online. "Booking offline makes no sense," he said. "Who
wants that? It's last-century technology." The company’s travelers now can
book online in its home market of Sweden, thanks to rail technology provider
SilverRail, which connected SKF’s chosen online booking tool—KDS—and Swedish
Rail. However, Holmyr has not yet gained online access to the operators he most
wants: Deutsche Bahn in Germany and SNCF in France.
Rail is a major issue for SKF, the world’s largest
bearings manufacturer, because many of its factories are far from international
gateway airports. In particular, Schweinfurt in Germany's Bavaria is best
reached from Frankfurt Airport by train, as is Tours in France’s Loire Valley
from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport—or at least they would be if SKF travelers
could book tickets online.
"My biggest frustration for many years has been
the train companies because they are not subject to any competition and are not
motivated to sell tickets to travelers from other countries," said Holmyr.
"The only reasonable way to get to some of our locations is to take the
train, but it is so difficult to book a ticket that it is basically forcing our
people to rent a car instead."
SilverRail will add Italy to its corporate booking
platform, SilverCore, this year, adding to the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands,
Luxembourg, the United States, Canada and Germany. That last country's operator,
Deutsche Bahn, offered only leisure fares until December 2015, when SilverRail
completed a separate connection to its corporate fares. That was "a key
gap in our business range and very difficult to book from international
markets," said SilverRail chief commercial officer Cameron Jones.
Now, Holmyr awaits a link through SilverCore to KDS. According
to Jones, "KDS is already connected to us for a few rail operators, so
connecting to the others should be a relatively quick exercise."
However, Holmyr said, "The countries most
important to me are France and Germany," and France remains a distant
prospect. Building an SNCF connection is problematic, as SilverRail does not
have one yet. It considers the level of connectivity the French national rail
operator is proposing inadequate for managed business travel. "We are
pursuing a deeper connection with them," Jones said.
SilverRail SNCF challenges stand as an example of
what Holmyr described as the "Sisyphean task" of modernizing rail
distribution. He would like it to evolve across Europe so that, for example,
interlining air and rail journeys could become a reality. However, Holmyr
conceded, that remains some way off. "Rail is where air was decades ago,"
he said.