Rail Europe’s ERA a hit

Its most intensive recent investment, Easy Rail Access (ERA) has halved the booking process for travel agents and is expected to be Rail Europe’s winning ticket to hit 500 mn euro in sales.

Hazel Jain

Dâu-Khôi NGUYEN, President and CEO, Rail Europe, was in Mumbai recently for a brief visit to meet some key trade partners. On top of his mind was the new Easy Rail Access or ERA that Rail Europe introduced in 2019.

ERA has simplified the booking process for agents by reducing the steps from 13 to just 6; it issues e-tickets that are instantly received by the agent

“India is an important market for us and also one in which we have been investing significantly in terms of servicing operations. We have close to 200 people now, working out of our global shared service centre in Mumbai. However, ERA has been our main investment that we have done for our travel trade partners,” he said.

Worldwide, Rail Europe grew 14 per cent in 2019 which equalled 418 mn euros in terms of sales volume. “India has made a particularly good contribution to this with both B2B growing single digit and B2C growing in double digits. We believe ERA will help us grow our B2B business further as we slowly phase out our old system – Euronet. It has simplified the booking process for agents by reducing the steps from 13 to just six. Moreover, ERA issues e-tickets that are instantaneously received by the agent,” Dâu-Khôi added.

Speaking about the products that have been introduced on ERA, he said, “One of the first products we introduced on this was the Swiss Travel Pass and we have received very good response from our trade partners. This is a very important product of our portfolio worldwide, and the introduction of ERA has re- ally accelerated the global and Indian sale of this product in 2019. We now have carriers like Spain, high-speed rail of France, and Euro Star, Thalys and TGV Lyria on ERA. We are going to introduce Italy and Deutsche Bahn in the coming months. We will also introduce passes like Eurail this year.”