Amadeus this week announced that it will connect with Rail Europe's content through its travel agent point-of-sale interface, enabling agents in Australia, Africa, the Middle East, New Zealand and South America to process bookings for more than 35 European rail networks.
The distributor for those markets, Rail Europe 4A, will link to the Amadeus Selling Platform beginning in India in the third quarter of next year with further deployment in Asia/Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East in the fourth quarter. Amadeus also plans to begin integrating Asia/Pacific rail content in future deployments.
According to Amadeus, rail reservations can be made using the traveler's existing itinerary passenger name record and can be added to air, car and hotel bookings.
Rail Europe is a joint venture between French national rail operator SNCF and Swiss Federal Railways. Along with those national operators, Rail Europe distributes content outside of Europe for rail providers including Germany's Deutsche Bahn, Italy's Trenitalia and Spain's RENFE. It also distributes rail content from cross-border networks including Eurostar, TGV Lyria and Thalys.
The Rail Europe agreement is Amadeus' latest attempt to bolster its rail content and booking capabilities. In July 2008, the company acquired a 95 percent stake in rail reservations system Onerail
(BTNonline, July 21, 2008). The purchase was aimed at enabling Amadeus to eventually display full rail content in the same search results screen as other transport options through the global distribution system by the end of next year, in time for the liberalization of the European rail industry.