The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
How to avoid rail’s hidden online pitfalls
Train booking websites don’t always show the best routes – but Daniel Elkan can help
IBy breaking each search into separate journey legs, we were able to
find better options
t’s a greener way to travel, it’s more scenic and there is no airport hassle. Taking the train from the UK to mainland Europe makes sense for travellers keen to cut carbon emissions and make the journey part of the holiday. It’s convenient, too: combining Eurostar to Paris, Lille or Brussels with onward high-speed or sleeper trains means you can alight close to the ski slopes or in a town or city centre.
You might imagine that, in 2022, booking a train journey between the UK and Europe online would be as simple as booking a flight. The Trainline website says travellers can “buy tickets quickly and save time, effort, and money”, while Rail Europe has the message: “Buy European train tickets, the safe and simple way.” Omio claims that “you can always find the best option”.
The reality is a little different. An investigation by Telegraph Travel found that, for journeys involving more than one train, rail-booking websites often fail to show the most convenient journey options available.
Searching Eurostar’s website for an indirect journey from London to BourgSaint-Maurice, via Paris, on April 2, I received a message stating: “Sorry, no trains are available on this date. This could be because the train is sold out, the service is not running, or tickets are not yet on sale. Please try a different travel date, or check back later.”
In fact, trains were available, but Eurostar wasn’t able to sell the whole journey because the final leg involved a local train incompatible with Eurostar’s booking system. A Eurostar spokesperson said: “It is not currently possible to provide a specific reason for each train that is not running, but it is something that we are looking to improve on in the future.”
We found that for rail journeys between the UK and Europe, websites such as Trainline and Rail Europe frequently show search results that are less convenient than what is actually possible. This could lead to unnecessary changes, missed connections or trips cancelled in despair. Only by breaking each search into separate journey legs did we find better options, something a traveller would not ordinarily consider when researching routes online.
This is a significant problem, according to rail expert Mark Smith, founder of independent rail guide Seat 61. “No traveller would ordinarily want to have to break a journey search into individual legs,” Smith says. “Nor would they even realise that in order to find a more convenient travel schedule, they might need to do so.”
When The Telegraph put these examples to Trainline, it refused to acknowledge the problem. A spokesperson said: “Our aim is to make booking crossborder, multi-operator journeys as simple as possible. This means that while there can be multiple journey combinations available, our platform will calculate and provide options that provide a balance of convenience and value.”
Responding to news of the instances we had found, a Rail Europe spokesperson said: “We will have to work with the SNCF tech teams for them to improve their train selection algorithm and offer a better customer experience.”
For journeys to Europe involving more than one train, Omio’s website failed to show any journeys. The company said that providing a traveller-centred product for rail is “a large challenge”.
According to Smith, online journey planners apply a blunt logic, which causes problems with search results. “Journey planners are automatically programmed to try to minimise journey time. But by doing this, they sometimes add extra train changes that save only minutes off a journey of several hours.
The system ignores the more convenient options,” he says.
Gaps between the arrival of a train and the departure of the next one can also fall foul of the website algorithms, meaning that instead of being shown a longer, possible journey, the traveller is shown no option at all.
“They’re incapable of adding the journey paddling that a human would if it was planning the journey,” says Smith.
“Train operators across Europe are not always as joined-up as they should be in terms of timetabling and selling tickets, which makes booking a journey across multiple European countries unhelpfully complex at times,” agrees Rory Boland, editor of Which? Travel.
“Many of us would like to swap planes for trains when travelling to Europe and this would be helped by being given clearer information on how to book the most convenient journeys.”