"50% rise in international rail travel by 2020"
European rail alliance Railteam has shelved plans for a common booking platform across all its members, said Eurostar today (November 26), citing spiralling costs.
The alliance of highspeed train operators had planned to develop a single ticket booking engine to cover all its seven members, among them Eurostar, Thalys, SNCF and Deutsche Bahn.
The platform was due to be unveiled this year, but a Eurostar spokesperson told ABTN the project had been scrapped for the foreseeable future.
“There was a huge amount of work and effort that went into seeing whether we could bring together a brokering system that would work,” said Eurostar.
“Unfortunately because of the complexity of the different distribution systems and linking them through, the solution would have cost many millions of pounds. A vast amount of money.
“Given the harsh economic that all travel companies are having to look at at the moment, that wasn’t an option.
Instead of creating a common booking platform, Eurostar believes the way forward is ensuring there is maximum acess for connecting fares through to different countries, through each of the individual’s different websites.
“The commitment now is to develop each of the rail team networks and break them down and link them through better,” said Eurostar.
“If you’re a resident in the UK you go through the Eurostar website, or if you’re a resident in France you go through the SNCF website.
“The Railteam website, depending on where you’re coming from or going to, will then link you through to the appropriate website. That’s the way that it will work.”
Railteam predicts a 50% increase in international rail travel by 2020, with 68 million trips being made per year compared to the 45 million that were made in 2007.
Railteam was unveiled in July 2007 with a budget of €30m to build the common platform and enable seamless travel between different national networks.
www.railteam.co.uk www.eurostar.com