Online booking tool providers are rapidly adding train operators to their supplier stables as air security procedures, environmental concerns and infrastructure improvements increase rail's efficiencyfor travelers. But getting rate and schedule information from--and enabling bookings with--these providers is easier said than done. Despite recent agreements between major rail operators and global distribution systems and the development of rail alliances, booking tool providers over the past few years also have painstakingly built direct content agreements.
A campaign by the European Commission to promote rail travel is expected to boost passenger volumes by 120 percent, according to Stanislas Berteloot, marketing director for online travel and expense management technology provider KDS. Already, multinational corporations are triggering "a huge upswing" in demand for integrated rail booking services, according to Suzanne Neufang, vice president of product marketing and user experience for Sabre's GetThere.
Despite interest among train operators in serving the corporate market, Berteloot said integrating rail options into booking tools remains a challenge for technology providers because of the need to aggregate networks of individual content connections and navigate individual country rules and regulations when facilitating cross-border journeys.
"It's a major headache for people to try and streamline the European rail transportation system," Berteloot said. "Connecting our self-booking tool with those national systems is equally a nightmare where you need to be discussing and getting authorization from the national railways in order to access their booking reservation system."
KDS has connection agreements with Scottish retailer thetrainline as well as rail operators including Deutsche Bahn, Eurostar and France's SNCF--and expects to finalize an agreement with Swedish operator SJ by the end of the year.
Eurostar, NS of the Netherlands and SNCF also are members of Railteam, an alliance (launched in July) of high-speed rail providers designed to facilitate intra-European rail travel. The alliance is expected to aid further development of high-speed rail links and streamline the traveler experience.
To overcome remaining obstacles, it's important to understand the history of rail development on the continent, Berteloot said. Until a few years ago, rail was considered a strategic national asset by European countries, and developed as monopolized, union-controlled entities that resisted major changes in how they operated. National railways were deregulated as of 1 Jan 2007, but the deregulation of international railways will not happen until 2010, so major changes and advances in operability may not happen until after that date, he added.
"Consequently, there is no 'IATA' for the train--although Railteam may have ambition to become one--and no GDS has global access to all train reservation systems," said Berteloot.
With the market fragmented, buyers remain frustrated by the lack of an international reservation system and the inability to negotiate one corporate deal with multiple providers, Berteloot said. An operator in one country could offer to book the entire journey across borders and with other national provider networks, but the operator does not have access to the best fares available for each leg of the trip due to individual commission agreements.
"Let say, for example, that a company based in Switzerland has negotiated a deal with the Swiss railways. The traveler going from Bern to Marseilles in France will travel on negotiated rate within Switzerland but will pay full price on the longest part of the trip, in France," Berteloot said.
Though the technology exists for streamlined cross-border European train travel through the online booking tools, Neufang said the fragmented rules and regulation of national train providers have had some impact. The issues are solved by the time the content is displayed in GetThere's tool, but the company's rail partners must work out the cross-border pricing with each other before the content is listed.
"It tends to have an effect on the faring ... when the trip crosses international borders. [The rail providers] are working on it one by one and hopefully in the next year or so it won't be such a problem," she said.
Such rail operators as Eurostar are forging agreements with global distribution systems, enabling booking tools that use GDSs to compare ticket prices for both air and rail side by side. Over the past two years, Madrid-based Amadeus has signed agreements with Deutsche Bahn, Eurostar and SNCF, among others.
"From the travel management company's perspective, it is critical to be able to process and invoice rail bookings," according to an Amadeus spokesperson. "Because Amadeus is bringing rail content to the travel manager's desktop, it also means the TMC does not need to have any special arrangement with the individual rail companies to be able to book and issue tickets."
One benefit of accessing fares and schedules through GDSs is that bookings are available through both online and offline channels, said GetThere's Neufang.
"In corporate travel, online bookings are great, but there are still a number of offline bookings and service issues that have to be taken into consideration," said Neufang. "Where that content lives has to be readily available to both online and offline sources. That's the whole efficiency that we in our business have to promise to our corporate customers"
Sabre is building out a rail consolidator platform that allows GetThere to serve customers regardless of what GDS they use, Neufang said, but GetThere also has lined up non-GDS connections as part of a "multi-modal" system allowing travelers to directly compare rail versus air options. GetThere will begin integrating a new SNCF platform in January, followed by UK Rail and Deutsche Bahn throughout the rest of 2008. It will access Eurostar content through the GDS.
Concur's Cliqbook supports Deutsche Bahn, Benelux's Rail 1 and will implement an agreement with SNCF by the end of this year. "Fundamentally, the way rail is distributed has changed," said Tom DePasquale, Concur vice president and general manager of travel management services. "The GDSs are saying, 'Stop these local agreements and come directly to us,' but then they say, 'We'll have a product available to you in two years.' That's not good enough."