Time flies in the world of train travel

Four years ago I took the train from London to Marbella to attend the ABTA travel Convention, and was looked upon as a madwoman for doing so. Writes Catherine Mack

I did it partly out of curiosity, partly out of stubbornness (I had just completed an Msc. in Responsible Tourism Management, so I was not only green, but very keen), and partly because of one encouraging editor’s promise that if I did, he would publish an article on my experience of travelling overnight on a train for business purposes.

The journey was fantastic and, with plenty of work to do, I simply transported my office (well, laptop) onto high speed trains for just short of 24 hours.  The only difference was that I had views of some of France and Spain’s most extraordinary landscapes instead of my inner city London street, and an excellent restaurant and bar just a few metres away when I needed to stretch my legs. I carried my green stubbornness into the Convention too, getting the chance to question the CEO of a leading tour operator, who was advertising his substantial CSR and sustainability policy, why he didn’t offer any package tours by train. He replied, “Until the customer asks for them, I am not going to contemplate that and, to be honest, I can’t realistically see that happening in the near future”.

The near future is now, I guess, and a lot has happened in four years, with business travel by rail becoming much more common place. The tour operator in question is now actually offering train travel for leisure customers, albeit only for ski holidays at the moment, but it’s a start. And when mainstream travel companies discover that it is possible to bring tourists to The Alps (and beyond)  in summer as well as winter, this opens up a whole new world for people who want the convenience and cost of a package holiday, but without the inconvenience and increasing cost, carbon or cash, of air travel.

It’s not just ‘madmen and madwomen’ who are seeing the benefits of trains anymore. After the Ash Cloud changed direction, so did many people’s perceptions of rail travel, and Eurostar, wisely, conducted a rapid customer feedback survey among those who had swapped their airline tickets for rail tickets after the dust settled. Eurostar wanted to know if this was going to be a one-off or would the passengers take the train again, whether there was volcanic ash fallout or not. The good news was that over 84% of those surveyed said that they would definitely or probably choose high speed rail over air when they were next planning a trip to continental Europe.

With Deutsche Bahn (DB) now making serious moves into the Channel Tunnel, having made their first trial journey of its Inter City Express (ICE) into Kings Cross St. Pancras last week, they now have plans to run a five hour connection from London to Frankfurt by 2013, with services also planned to run to Brussels, Amsterdam via Rotterdam, as well as to Cologne. The fifty per cent capacity currently available on the route run solely by Eurostar to date, is now opening up to huge possibilities.

Eurostar is, consequently, under to pressure to develop its product all the time, and with through connections becoming cheaper and easier to book it is keeping well on track.  I am planning on travelling from London to Lyon for a three day trip in December. Eurostar’s quoted price is £109 with a journey time of 5 hours and 45 mins. To go by budget airline on the same dates is £88 including one bag to check in and a debit card charge. Taking into consideration the airport transfers and airport stress,  the rail option is by far the better bet for me all round.

As for the media, there is stiffer competition for rail articles now compared to four years ago, with the travel pages turning into a veritable rail fest. Look at The Daily Telegraph’s Travel webpage and the last few months will bring up features on rail journeys in The Balkans, Spain, the Trans-Siberian Express, as well as a feature on ‘the Merits of Train Travel’. The Daily Mail has run features on taking the train from London to Athens, as well as the slow train through Spain. Last Saturday’s Independent travel section offered a leading feature on travelling through Europe by rail, following the romantic trail of Shelley.

Tourist boards, however, need to play a little catch up, and start promoting easy to book and good value rail services to visitors, using rail travel as a positive destination marketing tool. In Ireland, for example, people over 66 years old can travel free of charge on Irish Rail (www.irishrail.ie) , as promoted on the Discover Ireland website and this is rightly pulling in a lot of good PR in a country which is in need to upping its tourism numbers right now.

Progress shows in the oddest of ways sometimes too. Three years ago, I wrote a book called ecoescape:Ireland, and for each of my research trips I travelled from London to Ireland by train and ferry. On reaching my destination I would often get a taxi to the city centre, and the driver would nearly always ask me the same question, “Why didn’t you fly – are you afraid of flying then?” I gave up explaining after a while, as they looked at me blankly at the mention of carbon emissions. However, on a recent trip the driver asked where I had come from, and when I said London, he just said, “Wise move, planes just do my head in these days. I bet it was cheaper and quicker as well”. It was cheaper, he was right, but high speed trains are not quite hitting the North Wales coast yet, with my London to Dublin journey starting at 9am and finishing at 5.30pm.

Things are moving in the right direction, though, and in order to create a truly green and sustainable tourism product, rail networks need to keep joining up and keeping up and then, they’ll be flying.
 

Catherine Mack is the co-editor of www.greentraveller.co.uk
 
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