Rail Europe CEO and executive chairman Björn Bender
Rail travel specialist Rail Europe has been around for nearly a century – originally founded in New York to encourage North American travellers to use the French rail routes – and now distributes travel across more than 50 rail operators.
In recent years, Rail Europe has become an independent company, sold to private equity by French railway operator SNCF. Rail Europe CEO and executive chairman Björn Bender spoke recently with BTN executive editor Michael B. Baker about how the company has changed since its move to private equity and the increasing competition in European rail service due to liberalisation. An edited transcript follows.
BTN Europe: What has the ownership change meant for Rail Europe?
Björn Bender: We carved out of SNCF, the French railways, three years back. Since then, we are independent, [private equity]-backed, neutral and agnostic. This changed the entire set-up in terms of how we develop technology, how we see the customer in the middle of our product, how we work with all the suppliers and carriers in Europe and how we work with the travel trade around the globe.
Everything changed, even if Rail Europe is very well known. The last few years, we invested a lot in tech: better data, more predictivity, more AI solutions, more frictionless entire user experience. As in all rail, it's super complex, patchwork, not standardised with systems not speaking the same language. It's our job to harmonise it, as the leading rail aggregating platform globally when it comes to European train travel. Our main focus is on B-to-B, serving the travel advisor, the travel agencies, tour operators and [online travel agencies] – in the US, still by far our number one market – with the right product. The right product for us means an API product, very easy to implement. The second product is the rail portal, where all the independent travel agents and advisors are issuing our tickets.
BTN Europe: What's happening in terms of competition in the European rail market?
Bender: European rail in general, everything is changing at the moment with liberalisation and competition, and the customer feels it. We have competition in France, where Trenitalia is operating Frecciarossa trains between Paris and Marseille. We have more night trains coming up. We have billions of investments in cross-border services. Every hour has service between Paris and Frankfurt, Zurich-Frankfurt, London-Paris, even up now to Copenhagen. We have a new night train going to Malmo in Sweden from Switzerland.
So, there are plenty of new products, and now it is our job to let it do the inspirational phase in a good sense. We do also of course do a lot for [travel management companies] and [online booking tools], which is more our focus. TMCs obviously want a very tailored product to their corporate audience. We have a very tailored product for the leisure audience, but the API is easy to adopt for [self-booking tools] and OBTs.
BTN Europe: We're even seeing an end to the Eurostar monopoly on Channel Tunnel services.
Bender: Reading in the press, we can really expect that Virgin will start operating by 2030, which is tomorrow [in rail terms]. We know even one or two more carriers want to operate into St. Pancras or Paris.
When you look into the competition field, Austria is a good example. In Spain, you have now four high-speed carriers competing against each other between Madrid and Barcelona. In the end, everyone benefits.
The cake is big enough, because you have this modal shift from air traffic to rail traffic. The product diversifies more, because you have some going low cost, some going super luxury, some going super convenient in terms of operating hours, some less frequently at night. It gives the customer the possibility now to pick – as it's been in aviation for 20 years – the right offer for the right time.
BTN Europe: We're seeing more movement in rail distribution. How do you stay competitive?
Bender: In terms of services, what is super different from all others providing rail is the service part. We are not a travel tech company. We are more a service company. We really care about the consumer but also the travel agent or advisor having a consumer in front of them. Caring means information, 24/7 customer care and doing the entire after-sales, the very annoying refund processes you have, sometimes even refunding before we get the money back from the carrier. We really focus on the care part of the entire journey. The [global distribution system] does an excellent service for flights and hotels. Their focus was never rail. They are doing rail, but if you are not focused on rail, you can't provide this service level.
BTN Europe: Is supporting multimodal travel a priority?
Bender: Multimodal is [when travellers or bookers] are able with our API to build the entire chain, including flight, and maybe airport transfer and the Eurostar ticket from London to Paris. We also provide the multi-provider functionalities, which means, we have 250 rail carriers we are aggregating on our platform. When you book a ticket point-to-point from Zurich to Copenhagen, it's the Swiss railways, the German railways and the Danish railways. Usually, you can't book this in one search, one booking and payment process anywhere. We are giving this to the B-to-B audience and making sure at the end everything combines into one single booking process.
BTN Europe: How much is sustainability driving rail demand?
Bender: I've always tried to be realistic. We are the most sustainable mode of transport, besides walking or cycling. It emits 20 times less carbon than an aircraft does. On the other side, we know from our own surveys that for people choosing us or choosing a train, convenience is number one. Price is number two. Safety is number three. Those reasons have not changed over the last 20 years. Sustainability is number six, seven or eight. It depends on the market. Everyone talks about sustainability, but in the end, most will decide for convenience reasons. But of course, it's a good argument to say, besides all the advantages you have, travelling from city centre to city centre, you travel in a sustainable way.