While airlines have eagerly embraced the modern world of technology, the same cannot be said of railways.
Easy to use websites, detailed MI, flexible prices, e-tickets, online check-in are just a few of the many services and facilities airlines, both traditional and low cost, now offer their customers and agents.
But while these changes came about, the railways stood relatively still. In fact, in the UK at least, nothing really changed. The technology arrived – and was largely ignored.
There now seems to be a gathering momentum to bring about genuine change and improvement in the rail industry.
When thetrainline.com was launched in the UK in 1999, it introduced online booking for trains. It was updated and adapted in 2001 to make it usable for corporate travel with whom it is very popular.
Last year, there was another advance in the UK: the arrival of a software package Travelpackonline, designed by a travel management company, Harry Weeks Travel specifically for the corporate market. The package which enables online booking, enforces company travel policy compliance, provides full MI and can print tickets on the premises, is proving an immense success.
New developments are now awaited. Both Sabre and Amadeus, two of the leading GDSs, are planning new online booking tools for rail for summer 2007. They will replace the ancient ELGAR system which is due to be de-commissioned at the end of 2007.
Not before time as it is a separate system from the rest of the GDS and requires a trained and skilled operator. It is little wonder that agents have had little incentive to book a train ticket.
There are two other areas where trains are now making more effort to catch up with airlines: revenue management and ticketless travel.
While airlines adopted the former decades ago, trains, with one or two noble exceptions, have been slow to cotton on.
The SNCF was the pioneer, introducing revenue management in 1992. Eurostar has followed and in the UK, GNER is also now adopting this flexible pricing system. SNCF has since moved further ahead introducing what amounts to a low cost train, iDTGV which charges sharply reduced fares at off peak times on the Paris-Marseille route and which must be booked online.
There is a good chance that ticketless travel will be available in the next year or so. Eurostar wants to introduce it when it moves to its new terminal at London St. Pancras next year.
This ticketless travel is likely to involve a reference number sent to the booker's mobile phone after the online reservation has been made. This would then be checked with the train manager on the journey. Being able to do this fast enough for late bookings is one of the problems currently being encountered.
But there are other ways, of paperless rather than ticketless travel using a Smart Card. According to Jeremy Acklam, project manager for IT company Atos Origin, technology exists which enables a card to enable booking travel for air and train and which enforces policy compliance.
Only the "inertia" of transport companies is stopping its implementation.
There is also no technical reason why travellers can not buy with these Smart Cards a package which would include, for example, travel to Heathrow on the Heathrow Express, the flight and the train journey at the other end.
Finnair is already doing this in conjunction with the Arlanda Express in Stockholm. It would save both time and money.
As air fuel prices again surge upwards and, according to BA, likely to stay that way for some time and there is increasing pressure for “greener” corporate policies on travel, trains have an unrivalled opportunity.
In the right circumstances, business travellers are happy to go by train. As this week's figures show, more business travellers are using Eurostar on the London to Paris and Brussels routes than last year. The increase was a substantial 12% on routes Eurostar already dominates.
This, if nothing else should be an incentive - that travellers want to use your services - for the rail companies and the IT companies to provide the services and facilities that airlines do as matter of course.