Rail Europe has recently launched a B2B booking platform, Easy Rail Access – ERA that offers the largest catalog of 60+ European train operators (including SNCF, SBB, Eurostar, Thalys, Lyria, Trenitalia, Italo, DB, Renfe, OUIGO Spain, and NATIONAL RAIL) and rail passes, such as the Swiss Travel Pass and the Eurail Pass.
This brand new B2B platform offers a unique & seamless experience to plan & book rail travel to travel professionals. It allows them to access new features including the full range of fares, multiple payment options & currencies, and after-sales processing.
Into its 90th year of operation in 2022, Rail Europe is the business and technology partner of more than 20,000 travel professionals in 70 countries. As a part of the 90th anniversary, at the start of the year, Rail Europe had many promotional offers which included up to 50% off on some journeys in partnership with top European rail operators.
Currently, there are offers going on for Eurostar and Eurail. Travel professionals can avail 20% discount on Standard Premier Class bookings on Eurostar till July 17, and 15% off on all Eurail Global Mobile Passes till the end of July 2022. The company will be introducing such offers throughout the year. One can check the offers on our Rail Europe’s portal on the promotions page.
As the business is growing and markets are opening for travel, 2022 is the year of opportunities and growth. “Our focus this year is to make our B2B booking portal ERA – Easy Rail Access, more convenient for our GSAs and partners who are booking with our GSAs as well as those booking directly on our B2B platform agent.raileurope.com.
So, on the technology front, we are continuously adding a lot of new rail sectors and products and want to bring passholder fares, seat reservations for scenic trains in Switzerland, and more sectors on point-to-point tickets on our B2B portal soon. We are in the process of updating our portals with such technological innovations and determined to make it available for our partners by the start of the year 2023,” the company said.
“We conduct a series of webinars and training for our partners on a time-to-time basis. We also have our e-learning programme The Rail Agent Course (TRAC) which is a comprehensive rail training programme that includes Europe’s major train operators, that is also available on a dedicated app. Travel agents and partners can register and complete the assigned modules, complete the contests and win prizes.
After completing the course agents can earn The Rail Expert certificate. We are also updating this programme with more rail carriers’ modules. It is a fully equipped Rail Certification programme that travel agents can participate in to increase their knowledge about European trains and passes. The e-learning programme is available at: www.trac-raileurope.com.”
In the Indian market, Rail Europe is seeing pent-up demand for leisure and family trips to Europe, and Indians love travelling to Switzerland and France. So, there is an increase in demand for Swiss passes along with French train SNCF and Swiss France connecting train – TGV Lyria. Italian train – Trenitalia, as well as trains in the UK, are also seeing a rise in demand.
Rail Europe was founded in 1932 to promote French rail routes to North American travelers. Rail Europe soon extended its offer to the rest of Europe to become the largest one-stop shop for planning and booking European train travel.
