train

The deconfinement of Italy since mid-May is gradually allowing rail traffic with its neighbours to resume. From France, SNCF has reopened a daily service between Paris and Milan. Thello also resumed its first rail service on 4 June, solely between Nice and Milan. The company offers...

With the reopening of Europe's borders, rail companies are resuming their international services. In particular, the SNCF and its subsidiaries operating between Paris and Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and Switzerland. Good news for business travellers who need to get away. There is one major exception, however, with the...

An attractive alternative over distances previously considered unattractive by travellers, particularly business travellers. This is the commitment signed on 3 June by 25 countries of the European Union - as well as Norway and Switzerland - to encourage the development of fast or high-speed international lines on the continent, and to...

The timing is ironic: on 4 February at 7.48am, just a few days after Brexit came into force, Eurostar's management celebrated the inauguration of the direct service between Amsterdam and London. It was a symbolic inauguration, attended by Cora Van Nieuwenhuizen, Minister for Infrastructure and Water Management, Ankie Broekers-Knol,...

The Nightjet service, inaugurated in December 2016, continues to expand. The night service operated by ÖBB, Oesterreischiche Bundesbahn (Austrian Federal Railways), is proving to be a real success story for the company, one that is underpinned in particular by Europeans' growing awareness of their environment. According to the OBB, its network of night trains in Europe has...

Rail operators are preparing their weapons for the opening up of the rail sector to competition. In Spain, Renfe will be adding a new low-cost brand to its catalogue. Avlo, as it is known, was presented on 11 December. It is due to enter service on 6 April 2020 on the Madrid-Zaragoza-Barcelona route, with the aim of attracting mainly young customers...

It's time to breathe a sigh of relief: the authorities in charge of London Heathrow airport are finally going to implement a plan that will provide a direct rail link across the whole of Great Britain to Europe's leading air hub. The inertia that has prevailed until now in the development of new rail lines can be explained by the...

For several months now, Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) has been testing a new ticket integrated into the SBB mobile application with 15,000 users. The trial was so well received by users that SBB decided to extend the new EasyRide service to all public transport users in Switzerland....

Will there soon be no more domestic flights in Austria? Alexis von Hoensbroech, CEO of Austrian Airlines, launched the debate over the summer, provoking irritation in business circles, particularly regional chambers of commerce. On one of the channels of Austrian national radio ORF, the CEO of Lufthansa's Austrian subsidiary...

French business travel operators are taking advantage of the summer to invest in their fleets. While Air France has just announced the acquisition of 60 new Airbus aircraft, it's the SNCF's turn to buy new equipment. The Board of Directors of SNCF Mobilités has just approved an order for 12 TGV Océane high-speed trains. The amount...

Here's a development that runs counter to the renewed popularity of rail travel in Europe in the face of global warming: last year, SBB saw the number of passengers on its international trains fall by an average of 4%. This decline concerned the three main international markets from Switzerland to...

Already in use since May to Leeds (2 hours from London), 65 Azuma trains - built by the Japanese group Hitachi - will be running within a year on the network in the north-east of England operated by the state-owned London North Eastern Railway. In addition to an increase in capacity of around 100 seats per train...

Is it really a coincidence that the SNCF has chosen the day of the vote in the National Assembly on the Mobility Orientation Law (LOM) to present the SNCF Assistant, which the 13 million users of the SNCF app will be able to use from 19 June. The new application "is designed to be open to all...

Will regional business travellers one day have to choose between an SNCF train or... another TGV? This is the - barely caricatured - proposal put forward earlier this week by MPs François Ruffin (LFI) and Delphine Batho (Ecologie) during discussions on the Mobility Orientation Law (LOM). The aim would be to...

Italian and British business travellers are not in the same boat: while the former have benefited from an upmarket rail offer following the opening up of the market to competition, the latter are not doing so well. The report published on 29 January by Transport Focus condemns a historically low satisfaction rate....

Last week, the French government announced that it would be issuing a call for tenders in 2020 to allow competition on two railway lines, which will serve as a test: Nantes-Lyon and Nantes-Bordeaux, two minor lines representing a combined passenger traffic of 1.1 to 1.2 million. Rail competition would then begin in 2022,...

LVMH is expanding its presence in the luxury hotel sector, which until now has been limited to the Cheval Blanc houses - in Courchevel, Saint Tropez, Saint Barthélémy and the Maldives, and now Paris, in the former Samaritaine - as well as the six hotels developed by its Bulgari jewellery brand. A world leader in the luxury goods sector, the French group has...

In spring 2019, the SNCF intends to transform its application into a personal mobility assistant, which will not only inform passengers but also book, pay and validate the journey or its various stages. To achieve this, the rail group is creating e-voyageurs SNCF by bringing together its three technological nuggets: the OUI.sncf website (formerly Voyages-sncf.com),...

Around thirty railway workers from the CGT and Sud unions made a noisy appearance on the platforms of Paris-Lyon station on Thursday, prior to the announcement of the roll-out of the InOui TGVs by Rachel Picard, the CEO of Voyages SNCF. Already present on Paris-Bordeaux and Paris-Toulouse since summer 2017, this premium offer from the...

After the high-speed revolution, Guillaume Pepy, Chairman of the SNCF Management Board, has presented the autonomous train as "the next railway revolution". To embark on this adventure, the SNCF has just set up two consortiums, one dedicated to freight, the other to passenger transport, with the support of industrial partners and...