Rail Europe, KKday be a part of forces to advertise sustainable rail journey

Rail Europe has signed a memorandum of understanding with Taiwan-based journey experiences platform KKday to work collectively on inspiring extra journey to Europe amongst Asian vacationers whereas selling sustainable railway journey.

KKday stated it has seen a 60% enhance in gross sales of European journey merchandise this yr over the identical interval in 2019. The collaboration with Rail Europe will produce an all-in-one platform for vacationers utilizing KKday to entry merchandise spanning 33 European international locations and 150 rail manufacturers and routes.

The 2 firms additionally intend to work collectively on joint advertising and marketing campaigns, they usually stated they’ll “faucet into the in depth provider sources” each manufacturers have throughout Europe.

Björn Bender, president and CEO of Rail Europe stated the partnership serves his firm’s dedication to the Asian market and imaginative and prescient to supply a extra handy and sustainable journey expertise. The corporate has famous that touring by practice from Paris to Rome, for instance, means emitting greater than 20 instances much less CO2 than flying between the 2 capital cities.

“Within the post-pandemic period, people may have a heightened need to journey,” Bender stated. “Many will go for practice journey over pointless flights as a result of rising concentrate on sustainable tourism and environmental issues, reminiscent of decreasing carbon emissions.”

A report launched this summer time by SilverRail, an info expertise firm that focuses on rail ticketing and operations, confirmed that European markets with high-speed traces and extra competitors to decrease prices noticed spikes in passenger demand for rail over short-haul flights.

To quote one instance from the report, the addition of high-speed rail companies on the Madrid-to-Barcelona route in Spain led to a quadrupling of passengers selecting trains over planes. Later, when new carriers have been permitted to make use of the road, rail’s share of vacationers elevated to 73%.

Will increase have been additionally seen on high-speed routes with competitors in Italy and the UK.

Based in 2014, KKday affords greater than 300,000 experiences in 92 international locations. The corporate raised $95 million final yr in Sequence C+ funding.