DRMumbai: As the leading worldwide distributor of European rail products, Rail Europe is the only one-stop-shop for planning and booking European train travel and sightseeing products. From rail passes to train tickets and reservations, they provide unparalleled access to an extensive array of rail products from over 50 European train companies. Dâu-Khôi Nguyen, President & CEO, Rail Europe was in Mumbai recently.
Currently, India is the 6th largest source market for Rail Europe, which provides unparalleled access to an extensive array of rail products from over 50 European train companies
“We have grown globally 14 per cent in 2019 over 2018. 60 per cent of that is B2B coming via our agent partners,” said Nguyen. The rail consolidator has close to 200 employees in India also because their global customer care center is based in Mumbai.
India is the 6th largest source market for Rail Europe. India grew in single-digit last year due to local market challenges – the grounding of Jet Airways and bankruptcy of Cox & Kings. The US is the biggest market followed by Canada, China, Australia, India, Brazil, Japan and Korea.
In Mumbai, Nguyen met partners and shared details about investments Rail Europe has made on their new travel advisor booking tool for agents – Easy Rail Access (ERA). Trade partners are very critical to Rail Europe’s business and the new booking platform, which started roll out last year will complete in 2020. Swiss Travel Pass, the most sought after product will take half the time to buy on the new platform!
“We were at EUR 418 million (volume of sales) in 2019 and our ambition is to cross EUR 500 million in the next 18 months,” informed Nguyen.
Rail Europe is closely monitoring the coronavirus situation. Its employees across Asia and South East Asia are safe and have been advised to work from home. For their Chinese customers and other guests from affected markets who could not travel as planned, a full refund has been made. In the short term, it has impacted the business from China.
According to Nguyen, the favorite rail journey for Indian travellers is Switzerland thanks to Bollywood patronage. “They love the beautiful scenery and the snow in Switzerland. The UK is also a sought-after destination. The high-speed train Lyria between Paris and Geneva is also popular. I believe there is so much to see and experience in the south – Italy, Spain, even Germany, and Eastern Europe – waiting to be explored on rail by the Indians,” Nguyen added.
The long-distance rail market is estimated at €35-40 billion; 85-90 per cent of that comes from domestic travellers – Germans taking German trains; French taking French and English taking English trains. The rest is cross border or international tourists and a majority of this pie will come from proximity markets. By this calculation, about €800 million to 1 billion will be the size of the market for non-European travellers. “We are looking at 2.5 million Indian visitors to Europe from the 25 million outbound market in India. We are certain both these numbers will continue to grow healthily in the years to come,” stated a confident Nguyen.
Post the acquisition of Loco2, a UK-based B2C website selling European train journeys, Rail Europe introduced its B2C platform connecting all 26 rail operators. Till now it was only available to the UK market but offers an opportunity to address domestic commuters in Europe. This is where Rail Europe expects substantial future growth to come from. “We are excited about bringing Loco2 technology to other markets for a truly remarkable B2C user experience. The mobile app is available on iOS and Play Store.”
The season for international tourists coming into Europe is between spring and summer, and the peak is Feb-Mar and Sep-Oct. All carriers are investing to expand capacity for the next 10 years. For example, Lyria increased seat capacity by 30 per cent last December by adding new double-decker trains. Italy, Spain, UK and Germany have similar expansion plans. There is research to prove that demand for train journeys will increase YoY for the next 10 years, so carriers are eying to cash in on this demand.
Nguyen commented that post Brexit the company is not witnessing any change in consumer behaviour or booking pattern. Even before Brexit, travel between France and UK came under two passport regimes. For train travel there is no more or no less pain post Brexit for travel between Schengen nations and the UK.
Plenty of roadshows and product training workshops have been planned in the top 15 cities across India. Sessions in association with the tourism boards of France and Switzerland are also in the pipeline.
