British Airways’ decision to launch 12 weekly services between Heathrow and Paris Orly from January will not impact the growth and evolution of high-speed cross Channel rail services, says a senior travel industry figure.
Speaking to ABTN at the Total Rail Forum in Nice, the vice-president of marketing and distribution for travel technology firm Amadeus said BA was serving a distinct catchment area and that it would give consumers an extra option.
Norman Gage, director of business travel at Advantage, yesterday suggested that BA’s Orly service might put “extra pressure” on Eurostar.
But Ian Wheeler said he wasn’t surprised to hear BA had chosen to return to the Paris market, saying it would have carefully studied the potential demand.
“Like all good airlines BA would have analysed the route and the opportunities,” he said.
“Perhaps it sees an opportunity for traffic between the catchment areas close Heathrow in the west of London and Orly in the south of Paris, which are both at least an hour’s travel away from the cross Channel railway stations (Paris Gard du Nord and Kings Cross St Pancras).
“It will also feed its long-haul network out of Heathrow Terminal 5 and conversely the BA Open Skies service out of Orly.
“I’d have thought Eurostar would have grown the market [in recent years] and I don’t think they’ll be particularly worried.”
However, Wheeler said booking tickets on the Continental rail operators was still a challenge for UK corporates and travel management companies, though he said work was being done behind the scenes to harmonise booking processes.
“It’s clearly complex [to book multi-point rail tickets in Europe]. There isn’t one place you can go to access everything,” he said.
“For Amadeus, from a strategic point of view, we want to connect all [of the passenger rail operators] on one platform and push out the content on all of the distribution channels.
“But it’s not easy. We are dealing with the content of 10 or so operators who, by and large, use legacy systems; translating it all onto a standardised format is takes time and money.”
Wheeler said rail operators in Europe had not been resistant to change, “it was just never a priority before”, he said.
“But now they do want European-wide distribution, so it’s a question of getting the commercial deals [in place].”
Wheeler said rail the volume of rail bookings was growing exponentially every year, and the sector would eventually become a “large part of Amadeus’ life”.
“We are seeing growth in infrastructure investment and rolling stock – the projections are enormous. The market [in Europe] will grow over the coming years, and when it goes up against short-haul air travel it will eat into its market share.”
He said the industry should also expect the European Commission to push for more co-operation between airlines and rail operators.
He said rail growth was part of its “green agenda” and efforts to improve overall modal connectivity throughout the continent.