Booking rail travel online has been a frustrating, and ultimately fruitless, task in Western Europe. A couple of new Web sites are striving to change that.
I’ve read countless times that the travel industry is the No. 1 industry for the Internet in terms of dollars spent. Seems logical. People log on, buy a plane ticket, book a hotel room, purchase tickets to an event. But in Europe, and I'm writing about Western Europe here, things just don’t run that smoothly. At least not yet.
Recently, a friend of mine asked if I’d ever tried to book a train ticket online. As a matter of fact, I have, I told him, and I could never get it to work. He’s in the same situation. Of course, he can journey across town to the train station and actually buy the ticket there, but there are Web sites that are set up for the sole purpose of buying train tickets and yet, they never seem to work.
Enter Wandrian, an American company and producer of Railpass.com. Wandrian recently announced the launch of three new Web sites, FrenchRailDirect.com, GermanRailDirect.com and BritishRailDirect.com.
"These country-specific sites are designed to help fellow travelers plan the ultimate trip, and include everything you need to know about traveling by rail," said Mike Fuller, president and co-founder of Wandrian. "As rail travel fanatics, we really wanted to highlight some of the great opportunities for rail trips throughout these countries and to promote the fact that rail is really the best way to truly see Europe. The sites will be updated continually with the latest rail promotions from BritRail and Eurail, as well as special deals and offers exclusive to the sites' users."
Can’t tell you how happy I am to see these coming. Now, I haven’t actually booked a ride through any of the sites yet, but I did play around a bit and it looks like all systems are go. I also sent an IM to my friend about it and I think he’s trying to book a ticket. I can’t wait to hear if it works.
It brings me to a rare gripe about Europe: Many businesses have yet to join the Internet age. For whatever reason, they don’t seem to understand the impact – the positive impact – getting with it could have on their bottom line. And if they don’t get with it, another company, ahem, possibly an American company, will step in and take over.
