Rail Europe, Inc.

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For the European agency that traded in the United Kingdom as Rail Europe until December 2013, see Oui.sncf.
Rail Europe, Inc.
IndustryTravel
Rail transport
Founded1990, but incorporated earlier entities like DER which had a business history going back to 1930s
HeadquartersWhite Plains, New York, U.S.
Websitewww.raileurope.com

Rail Europe, Inc. was a North American distributor of European rail products, providing point-to-point tickets and rail passes for European rail travel. The company was widely known in the European rail industry as RENA (Rail Europe North America).

Rail Europe, Inc. was established in 1990, but claimed a history of doing business in North America dating back to the 1930s, long before Rail Europe itself was founded. The French national rail operator (SNCF), along with its Swiss counterpart (CFF/SBB) and the Deutsche Reichsbahn, had representatives in the United States in the 1930s. Those operations were later subsumed into Rail Europe, Inc. in North America. In 1959, the company introduced the Eurail Pass to the North American market.[1]

The company was headquartered in White Plains, New York, and had a contact Center located in Rosemont, Illinois, ISO 9001:2008 certified,.[2] Both offices closed, as most of the company's staff were laid off, in 2020. The Rail Europe office in Rosemont near Chicago had its origins in the German Railways' representation in North America. The German Reichsbahn sent up travel bureaux outside Europe in the 1930s, keen to encourage overseas visitors to discover a changing Germany. After the Second World War, DER in North America distanced itself from its Nazi antecedents and developed into an agency with wider European interests, and in time became part of the newly developing Rail Europe, Inc.

Rail Europe Inc's core products included European rail passes and point-to-point train tickets. The tickets sold were mainly full fare TCV tickets, which were the mainstay of international rail travel in Europe in the 1970s and on until the late 1990s. But the widespread adoption of much cheaper yield-managed fares from around 1998, not generally available through Rail Europe, left the company unable to compete.

Markets and channels[]

Rail Europe, Inc. served individuals through its B2C product. It also worked with travel agencies.[3]

Residents of the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Central American countries north of the Panama Canal could book directly through Rail Europe's websites (B2C), mobile site, IPhone app, and contact center.

Rail Europe, Inc. also maintained a trade (B2B) website for travel agents to book for clients. Travel agents could also book through the company's contact centre.

The successor company Rail Europe SAS, part of the Paris-based SNCF group, continues to offer similar services on the website www.raileurope.com - but now based on entirely different technology from the old Rail Europe arrangements. The website raileurope.com now draws upon the journey planner, routing logic and booking system integrations developed by Loco2 Limited in the period between 2013 and 2017. Loco2 Ltd was taken over by SNCF in June 2017, and from summer 2020 Rail Europe SAS accessed that new technology. Rail Europe, Inc's residual business was migrated to the platform developed in the UK by Loco2 and its customer service and after sales operations scaled back and relocated to a new operations hub in India.

Products and services[]

European travel products offered by Rail Europe, Inc. were shaped around a comprehensive 'catalog' of opportunities, for both B2C and B2C clients, ranging from Europe-HiSpeed to lesser services like Rhine Valley Train and Bavarian Castles and various EuroCity services. A dedicated Rail Europe team maintained this 'catalog' for many decades.

  • Rail Passes - mainly sourced from Eurail.
  • Train Tickets - for one-way or round-trip train journeys from city-centre to city-centre. These paper tickets were in the main TCV tickets, which in the 1980s were reasonably priced, but by 2000 were no longer a viable option, having been undercut by the fares available on European rail operators' own websites.
  • Print at home e-tickets for a limited number of city pairs.
  • Seat Reservations - mandatory for high-speed trains in France and Spain and made available to rail pass holders at "passholder" rates.
  • Sleeping Accommodation, viz. couchettes and sleeping berths - available on some overnight trains.
  • High-speed trains such as Thalys or Eurostar. 
  • Sightseeing Tours
  • Group Fares

References[]

  1. ^ Michael Taylor (August 11, 2005). "Pierre Le Bris -- travel industry executive invented Eurailpass". San Francisco Gate. Retrieved 6 March 2014.
  2. ^ James Ruggia (November 1, 2011). "Behind the Scenes at Rail Europe". TravelPulse. Retrieved 6 March 2014.
  3. ^ Transporting Tourist All Over Europe – In Real Time

External links[]

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