One European Travel Manager's Quest To Get Rail Operators Online

SKF global travel manager Mikael Holmyr is closer to conquering one of his travel program's biggest logistical challenges: booking foreign rail tickets online. "Booking offline makes no sense," he said. "Who wants that? It's last-century technology." The company's travelers now can book online in its home market of Sweden, thanks to rail technology provider SilverRail, which connected SKF's chosen online booking tool—KDS—and Swedish Rail. However, Holmyr has not yet gained online access to the operators he most wants: Deutsche Bahn in Germany and SNCF in France.

Rail is a major issue for SKF, the world's largest bearings manufacturer, because many of its factories are far from international gateway airports. In particular, Schweinfurt in Germany's Bavaria is best reached from Frankfurt Airport by train, as is Tours in France's Loire Valley from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport—or at least they would be if SKF travelers could book tickets online.

"My biggest frustration for many years has been the train companies because they are not subject to any competition and are not motivated to sell tickets to travelers from other countries," said Holmyr. "The only reasonable way to get to some of our locations is to take the train, but it is so difficult to book a ticket that it is basically forcing our people to rent a car instead."

SilverRail will add Italy to its corporate booking platform, SilverCore, this year, adding to the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, the United States, Canada and Germany. That last country's operator, Deutsche Bahn, offered only leisure fares until December 2015, when SilverRail completed a separate connection to its corporate fares. That was "a key gap in our business range and very difficult to book from international markets," said SilverRail chief commercial officer Cameron Jones.

Now, Holmyr awaits a link through SilverCore to KDS. According to Jones, "KDS is already connected to us for a few rail operators, so connecting to the others should be a relatively quick exercise."

However, Holmyr said, "The countries most important to me are France and Germany," and France remains a distant prospect. Building an SNCF connection is problematic, as SilverRail does not have one yet. It considers the level of connectivity the French national rail operator is proposing inadequate for managed business travel. "We are pursuing a deeper connection with them," Jones said.

SilverRail SNCF challenges stand as an example of what Holmyr described as the "Sisyphean task" of modernizing rail distribution. He would like it to evolve across Europe so that, for example, interlining air and rail journeys could become a reality. However, Holmyr conceded, that remains some way off. "Rail is where air was decades ago," he said.

Source: One European Travel Manager's Quest To Get Rail Operators Online