Changing Track – The Business Travel Magazine

Travel buyers met with experts from South Western Rail at a Business Travel Lunch Forum to discuss how train travel can play an important role in their sustainability travel programmes. 

The event, which took place at the Caledonian Club in London’s Belgravia, focussed on domestic UK rail and how to encourage travellers out of cars and taxis and on to trains, but also looked at modal shift from air to rail on European routes and beyond.

Buyers exchanged ideas and experiences and had a range of different approaches, ranging from mandating rail travel for trips that can be done in a certain number of hours to taking a more gentle approach of educating and encouraging their travellers to consider rail options. 

Buyers agreed that seeing rail options – and the carbon emissions – listed alongside air travel on online booking tools would help to encourage more travellers on to trains.

Here are some of the key takeaways from two rail experts and two travel buyers at the Lunch Forum discussion:

Joe Thurgood, Sales Manager, SWR

The Business Travel Lunch Forum was a great way to get a better understanding of how buyers are approaching rail and how they’re building it into their travel programmes and sustainability strategies. There seems to be a 50/50 split between those organisation who believe rail is fundamental to achieving their sustainability plan and those who have to prioritise rail for business journeys.

While some organisations appear to be full throated in their move to using rail to achieve sustainability targets others – while still promoting sustainability – are yet to fully embrace rail.

The discussion confirmed my belief that better integration is required between ticket issuing systems and expense systems to make it easier for corporates, and that train operating companies should begin to look at integration between UK domestic rail and that on the continent and, dare I say it, Ireland.

One interesting point that was raised was that there should be better industry-wide messaging to influence travellers in changing their travel habits and encourage a modal shift. The ability for the traveller to see their contribution to sustainable travel could be delivered through messaging on digital tickets and at stations.

Roberta Iorizzo, Global Travel and Expense Manager, SCOR

At SCOR, we have started mandating the train for all journeys that can be done in four hours or less, and believe that our people will embrace this and we’ll see a positive difference.

We allow First Class rail travel, regardless of the length of the journey, as an incentive to make the modal shift. We know that switching from air and road to rail also boosts the wellbeing of our travellers, promoting an improved work-life balance and benefiting both productivity and the environment.

Was it easy to implement? Absolutely not. The main issue is that train content in the booking tool is simply not all there. To book rail in a different region as part of a complex trip is extremely challenging. We need rail transportation options to be fully-integrated in our booking tool and we need cross-border ticketing. Today this is not the case.

The paradox is that if people want to respect the policy and take the train, they often need to break the policy by booking direct! We decided therefore to allow direct bookings (made outside the official channels) and put a workaround in place to retrieve the data from expenses.

I am hoping that our booking tool promise of a European Trainline fully integrated will live up to expectations and I am grateful for my TMC’s efforts.

It was great to take part in the Lunch Forum and comforting to see that most travel managers are facing the same issues. Although it was great to hear from the rail provider directly, I think we should extend the conversation to TMCs and booking tools, putting everyone around the table, to really understand the barriers and what can be done to make this work. I look forward to the next one.

Eloise Ferrara-Neched, Procurement Manager Travel & Events, Royal Mail Group

The challenges corporates face are similar at a high level, despite programmes being managed in different ways, and in the short term will likely remain unchanged, despite all the efforts from Rail Delivery Group and train operating companies with delay repay, ticket simplification and improving communication.

What is unique in the travel industry is the willingness to collaborate and share insights, good practice, and challenges through various working groups like ITM, BTA buyer groups, and through TMC and supplier advisory boards.

Rail is a significant portion of our travel spend at Royal Mail and coming out of Covid there was an ideal opportunity to promote the shift to rail travel from road and air.

I have worked with my TMC Clarity (formerly Agiito) to drive this change through targeted campaigns using the RDG Green Travel Pledge data calculations to demonstrate the CO2 reductions when compared with road mileage. To support this, we introduced the Caledonian Sleeper Train to the programme and mapped out  journeys from station to station and Royal Mail sites. The challenge was timing and the rail strikes but we plan to relaunch this campaign in the coming months.

Georgia House, Sustainability Manager, SWR

All the attendees at the Lunch Forum had a good grasp of where their business stood in regard to sustainability, with many having dedicated teams in the business looking after this area.

It was also great to see many organisations had ambitious targets in relation to sustainable travel and to see where rail sat in relation to these. The majority were focused on air travel rather than rail as this made up the majority of their footprint and with air travel being first for businesses to tackle, rail is clearly further down the list.

 We discussed future reporting requirements and how commuter travel will need to be monitored as well as business travel, and how integration of ticketing systems needs to be addressed in order to provide a smooth booking experience.

It was also agreed that having sustainability facts and figures on these systems and tickets would provide visual guilt and that train operators should communicate the sustainability benefits of rail better to encourage modal shift.