Are you a “train-bragger”? In case you journey commonly for enterprise, you could already be one – and in case you are a company journey supervisor, you’ll actually need extra of your colleagues to be one, in response to Liz Emmott, International Distribution Director at Trainline Accomplice Options.
Prepare-bragging is an idea we’ve been selling at Trainline lately, as a part of our ongoing sustainability marketing campaign, I Got here by Prepare. A extra constructive notion than merely forcing behavioural change by means of flight-shaming, the thought behind train-bragging is that rail must be seen as one thing that’s worn as a badge of honour, and that travellers ought to take pleasure in utilizing the practice.
We’re trying to help an actual and rising urge for food for sustainable journey. Earlier this yr, a Trainline survey of British enterprise travellers discovered two-thirds have been involved about their very own private carbon footprint of business-related journey in 2022, 72% needed to make extra of their journeys utilizing lower-carbon modes of journey this yr and 78% mentioned sustainability can be an vital consideration for them when deciding on their enterprise journey wants this yr.
There are additionally a spread of coverage levers that UK and European governments are pulling to encourage extra sustainable journey, from France’s much-discussed ban on home flights when a rail various exists, to the elevated obligations on companies in lots of nations to watch and report on the carbon footprint of their operations.
Rail journey can also be altering, with the rising liberalisation of Europe’s rail business seeing new operators getting into the market to compete with incumbent carriers on each worth and high quality. Seven of the ten busiest routes in Europe now have competitors between carriers.
The longest-standing competitors has existed on the Rome-Milan route, which over a decade noticed the common worth for rail travellers scale back by 40%, rail double its modal share on the path to 75%, and conversely aviation’s modal share fall from 50% to lower than 20%. Now different routes are poised to see comparable advantages – Barcelona-Madrid for instance has been reworked previously 18 months and now has 4 completely different carriers competing, every creating a aggressive supply geared in direction of their very own goal market.
Plus rail journey affords enterprise travellers wider advantages past decreasing their carbon footprint. Analysis we undertook final autumn discovered greater than eight out of ten UK enterprise travellers mentioned sustaining productiveness throughout their journey is vital to them. Right here rail has a pure benefit over each driving and flying, even when the door-to-door journey isn’t at all times faster.
Most work is inconceivable to mix with protected driving, whereas the stop-start nature of air journey doesn’t lend itself to devoted working time. Extra dependable entry to WiFi, a extra snug bodily surroundings for work, and fewer ready round have been among the many prime causes cited by survey respondents for travelling by rail as an alternative of by street or air.
All this explains why we’re eager to make it easy for enterprise travellers to check their rail choices and purchase tickets, no matter journey they’re making throughout Europe. We’ve partnered with CWT, and different gamers within the enterprise journey market, to streamline and combine enterprise journey by rail and take away one other barrier stopping enterprise travellers from selecting the practice.
As a result of the train-braggers are arriving quickly, at a platform close to you, and we need to help them.
About CWT
CWT is a Enterprise-to-Enterprise-for-Staff (B2B4E) journey administration platform. Firms and governments depend on us to maintain their individuals related – anyplace, anytime, anyhow – and, throughout six continents, we offer their workers with modern expertise and an environment friendly, protected, and safe journey expertise.
Interact with us by way of LinkedIn, Fb, Twitter and our Podcast.
