Rail content
aggregator SilverRail Technologies announced its intention to create "an
industry-first platform for travelers to plan and book complex rail trips,"
now that it has acquired Integrated Public Transport Information System, the
door-to-door journey planning business of Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen.
According
to a statement from SilverRail, IPTIS is the only independent search and
journey planning system in the rail industry, powering more than 75 percent of
all rail searches in the United Kingdom. Jeppesen, which sells transportation
support services and products, is exiting journey planning to focus on its core
business. In a prepared statement, SilverRail co-founder and CEO Aaron Gowell indicated
the merger is intended to realize a "vision to create air-like search and
booking quality for rail."
"Our
company was built on rail transactions but we want to move more into search,"
SilverRail chief commercial officer Cameron Jones told BTN during an
Association of Corporate Travel Executives conference in Barcelona last month. "The
idea is to provide schedule and availability and also fare data all in one
search. This will provide all the data in one search without handing off to a
rail carrier to provide the pricing and transaction."
Door-to-door
trip planning has emerged as a major theme in corporate travel booking tool development
in 2013. "It is the way of the future," said Jones. "We are
seeing the corporate travel industry leapfrogging leisure in this respect. The
big players in leisure haven't got into door-to-door yet."
SilverRail aggregates rail
content from nine countries through a single distribution platform called SilverCore.
An as yet unidentified large European market in the next couple of months is
expected to be added as a 10th country.