U.S. Online Booking Tools Add Euro Rail Ties

U.S.-based online booking tools this year are adding more robust capabilities for providing European rail content and giving local market leaders, such as Amadeus E-Travel Management, I:FAO's Cytric and KDS, added competition.

Concur Technologies' Cliqbook self-booking tool will add direct-connect capabilities from Deutsche Bahn in June, from Benelux's Rail 1 in August and from SNCF, which serves France, in September or October, said Tom DePasquale, executive vice president of strategy and general manager of travel at Redmond, Wash.-based Concur. Cliqbook will add these carriers to its U.K. domestic rail travel offerings through Evolvi—an interface for domestic U.K. rail content—and Eurostar, which is available through the global distribution systems.

GetThere, which plans to increase its space in the European rail content arena following beta testing it plans to begin this fall, has offerings for rail lines through TheTrainLine, SNCF, Lyria, and Thalys, in addition to Eurostar. Along with upgrading its technology for SNCF's new platform, GetThere will begin testing with added content for Deutsche Bahn, which is now available through Sabre-connected agencies in Germany, according to Suzanne Neufang, vice president of product and marketing for GetThere.

"As we're expanding in Europe and wanting to do a better job of accommodating corporate travel agencies in that market, we want to have better tools, better offerings, better access to content," said Sabre chairman and CEO Sam Gilliland. "We want to be at a really good place from a rail perspective even as we get to the end of this year."

However, GetThere will face challenges to add direct content and provide it on a single platform. "The traditional barriers have been gaining access to the content and building between the actual train lines themselves," Neufang said. "The challenge moving forward is that there is parity with the basic content."

Sabre plans by year-end to take its direct connections one step further and include their rail portfolio on an intermodal platform that shows rail alongside air options, according to Sean Datcher, director and product area leader of travel content for Sabre Holdings. "We want to answer the challenge and deliver a consolidated interface with rail."

Other online booking tools plan to advance their direct-connect offerings in 2007.

Paris-based KDS remains a strong player in Europe with access to content for SNCF, Deutsche Bahn, Eurostar and the nearly 30 train lines that service the U.K. through TheTrainLine, has led the other players in providing content alongside air in the same booking interface. Within the year, KDS plans to provide content to the Belgian SNCB and Swedish rail, according to Dan Fitzgerald, U.K. pre-sales and marketing manager for KDS.

Amadeus E-Travel Management already carries direct-connect capabilities to SNCF, Thalys, Eurostar, Deutsche Bahn, Swedish Rail and Benerail.

One of the industry-perceived leaders in Germany, I:FAO Cytric, which includes among its approximately 2,300 corporate customers Ikea, Siemens AG and RWE AG, currently has online and e-ticketing booking capabilities for Deutsche Bahn, SBB in Switzerland, Rail 1, which carries Thalys and Eurostar, and Evolvi. The Frankfurt-based company plans to gain access shortly to TheTrainLine for increased U.K. rail content and SNCF by year-end, according to Carolin Beres, business development manager at I:FAO. Even with increased rail content, Beres recognized the need for travel managers to explore using myriad booking tools in different markets based on the strength of the rail content.

"No customer uses one system with one rail provider," Beres said. "They need to look at different systems in different countries."

HRG Worldwide's fastest-growing segment of business in Europe is rail, according to Michael Platt, group industry affairs director for HRG, which provides rail content through its HRG Online booking tool. Platt estimates that rail is 20 percent of the company's transactions in Europe and it "may even be higher online."

"Booking systems have never really been geared toward rail," Platt said. "People are suddenly realizing how important rail is and they want to be part of it. Rail is actually providing competition in price and service to air travel, especially in mainland Europe. People are converting to booking rail online quicker than other modes of transport."

Although BCD Travel supports about a dozen booking tools, Ellen Trotochaud, senior vice president of online global technology solutions for BCD Travel, said five primary players in the European market provide rail content—Concur's Cliqbook, E-Travel, GetThere, KDS and Cytric. However, she advised travel managers to assess their programs and rail needs before selecting which online booking tools to use for these purposes.

"It's a balancing act in finding out what's happening in their program and how broad they want to get," she said. "When you are trying to tackle a lot of different markets, look where the volume is. Travel managers need to figure out where they are doing business and what objectives they may have that could drive them to one tool or another. We try to understand their markets, what countries they are operating in and the percent of rail, percent of air and their security requirements."

While the conventional wisdom is that travel managers need to use a cocktail of online booking tools to efficiently cover rail content in Europe, Floyd Widener, Carlson Wagonlit's vice president of sales in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, sees local and global suppliers converging their content in the future, which would allow travel managers to "use one tool across all borders."

"The big guys will get more local content and the local players will build the infrastructure to sell to multinational and global customers," he said. "They are probably starting to converge right now."

The decision to consolidate to one booking tool in Europe for rail depends on the company culture, said KDS' Fitzgerald. "If they say we need to get the spend down and get the bottom line down, then that is where consolidation comes in," he said. "If it comes down to service, then using multiple local tools can make a little more sense."

"Rail has always been a requirement. It just depends where you are in the world," Concur's DePasquale said. "Rail usage is strong and at an all-time high, especially with online ticketing now available."

Acquiring the content does not come without its obstacles, as integrating the content from the carriers comes at a high cost and determining how to display it relevantly to users is something the online booking tools will have to work with travel managers to figure out.

"In actuality, rail has to exist twice," DePasquale said. "Rail should exist on its own in a handful of markets when displaying on the same screen makes sense. In some cases, it needs to be shown with air on some citypairs and some it doesn't."