During August, ABTN editor, Simon Warburton, reviewed several European and UK rail services and reports back now on how the train stands up for the business traveller.
As the clamour from the greens grows ever more tumultuous, with aviation apparently painted as the destroyer of the planet, is it practical to use rail as an alternative to flying from a business perspective?
It”s a popular conception that European rail systems are super-fast and are environmentally friendly in a way that aircraft can never be. Well, up to a point Lord Copper.
There are some genuinely quick services that”s for sure. The Brussels-Paris route is a breathtaking blur of pylons and telegraph poles, but the Cologne-Brussels trip is a meandering dawdle through the ” admittedly very picturesque ” Ardennes.
Eurostar is clearly upping its game and with the opening of the glittering new St Pancras station in London later this year, journey times will be slashed to allow access to Paris in 2h 15m and Brussels in a rapid 1h 51m.
The under-Channel operator has impressive facilities for the business traveller, including a decent lounge at Waterloo and if its quality can be replicated at St Pancras, it will be a relaxing and efficient start to any journey.
Business travellers are clearly paying a premium, so what do they receive for handing over extra cash? Well, Eurostar provides a highly impressive at-seat dining experience, deep, wide armchairs and a frequent traveller scheme. Pan-European operator, Thalys also provides a similar level of pampering, while Deutsche Bahn, despite its highly competitive, dare we say, cheap, business class fares, doesn”t quite measure up in the same way.
But it”s not just the Europeans who are changing the face of rail travel. Despite Virgin Train”s sparse business lounge at Euston, its business offering is second to none.
Virgin have revolutionised UK train travel from the old slam-door, smoke-riddled old chuffers into a gleaming 21st century service that oozes class and sophistication. Standard class is pretty good anyway, but the business end really sets it apart.
Tables already laid with cloths and metal cutlery, attentive staff and high quality food, combined with large, comfortable seats and lots of frills, all make Virgin the industry leader in the UK. It”s true that journey times to Scotland for example, are still frustratingly long, but completion of the West Coast Main Line should help, although the British government seems to have shut the door on any north-south high-speed line as found in France for example.
It may seem a small thing, but Virgin has flat tables to work on or rest a laptop. Too often on European services, the fold-down table provided slopes down, causing an avalanche of food and making it very difficult to work. Eurostar was better in this respect however.
And despite much trumpeting from the Europeans about its Railteam concept, it will still be some time before the unified element of being able to book a trans-European trip becomes a reality.
The success of airline alliances such as Star and oneworld owes much to the fact that UK passengers for example, can use miles earned on, say, SAS for flights on bmi. If the European members of Railteam could also come up with something similar, they may be on to a winner.
Both Eurostar and Thalys have frequent traveller programmes, but if they could be used in a similar way to airline alliances, then so much the better.
On reflection, any one of the rail trips ABTN took during August would probably compete effectively with the airlines, although the two longest ” London-Cologne and Cologne-Paris ” would have to improve journey times considerably to make them really effective.
We took all the European journeys during a three-day period and doing it that way certainly felt like never really leaving a train. And the work concept is all very well, but it depends on several factors such as busyness of cabin, availability of power points and even seemingly trivial matters such as whether the fold-down table is flat. It”s important.
Who emerged the best rail provider? Well, despite the highly-impressive Thalys service from Brussels to Paris, it”s Virgin that takes the plaudits even though its trains are not as rapid as its TGV counterparts.
Sumptuous service, a decent frequent traveller scheme and a feeling that this, like its airline sister company, is something out of the ordinary, puts Virgin in a different class.