Ebookers.com is partnering with SilverRail Technologies to become the first European online travel agent to sell rail tickets.
Through its partnership with Tech City-based SilverRail, online travel agent Ebookers.com will become the first European online travel agent to sell rail tickets alongside flights, hotels and care hire.
Despite the popularity of rail travel, booking and planning train travel has remained more complex and difficult than booking flights – until now, it has been impossible to book a train journey as part of a holiday package.
Consumers have previously had to rely on separate rail-only booking websites for train travel. SilverRail has partnerships with the train operators to plug directly into their system for bookings; doing the legwork for travel agents to search and book train journeys.
“We are committed to making purchasing rail travel as simple as possible,” says SilverRail chief executive Aaron Gowell. “Our partnership with Ebookers.com is the first of its kind and we think other online travel agents will soon realise the value of including rail within their product portfolios. We hope to see more partnerships like this one covering more countries and further expanding consumer access to rail travel.”
Highest level since 1920s
Rail travel within Britain is currently at its highest usage level since the 1920s, with more than 1.4 billion journeys made in 2012 – a rise of 37% since 2000, according to the Association of Train Operating Companies.
Historically, train travel has been more difficult to book than air travel because train operators all use different reservation systems, which were often legacies from when they were government-owned.
SilverRail and Ebookers.com are starting with UK rail travel, but are looking to grow this into other European countries soon. Other features that online travel agents working with SilverRail will be able to offer include tools to include rail as part of door-to-door travel packages and tools to compare rail and air travel, a spokesperson for SilverRail added.