The increasingly popular flight-shame movement is pushing more and more Swedes to ditch air travel in favour of more sustainable rail alternatives. With the holiday season kicking off and cheap flying deals increasingly available, Adele Berti asks how and where trains could become a more popular transportation method than planes in the future.
https://rail.nridigital.com/future_rail_jul19/flight-shaming_can_railroads_replace_flying
Important step: Making rail bookings easier!
With so much potential in their hands, however, both the travel and rail industries are missing out on the opportunity to drive crowds towards trains. On the one hand, explains Smith, travel agencies are set up to deal with flights, while finding and booking the best and cheapest rail tickets is often too complicated. Meanwhile, he adds, the rail industry is becoming increasingly fragmented, with too many operators having „blinkers on and looking at their own little patch“, inevitably leading to poor customer services.
“Europe-wide, there is a massive problem that the distribution for rail is 30 years behind the distribution for air,” says Smith. “You have to know which specific website to use to book which journey.”
