International Rail joins with gapyear.com
Rail specialist International Rail is teaming up with gapyear.com in a bid to grow its market share of the Australian, Canadian and US backpacker transport market.
It will provide a global rail search engine to gapyear.com through its own website, InternationalRail.com.
Tom Griffiths, founder of gapyear.com, said: “Rail has unfortunately always been the ‘also ran’ in the independent travel market, coming a very poor third as a travel option in-country to travel by coach and car.
“The rail industry, to be honest, has also been a pain to work with! A fragmented offering with a lack of quality rail passes aimed at this market through multiple brands, sites and partnerships, we have found it impossible until now to deliver a clean, consistent offering to our users.
“However, International Rail, with their global offering have breathed new life into the rail sector by enabling sites like gapyear.com to place the rail passes neatly alongside their coach, car and plane rivals, finally making it an option which can be considered by all.
“With the resurgence in popularity for European adventures using the Inter-rail pass and a preference by independent travellers to take a train over a bus for long journeys, we expect to see substantial demand for their passes and point to point. For backpackers wanting to save the planet? Well, it also gets the green thumbs up!”
Omid Golshan, vice president of ecommerce at International Rail, added: “The long haul, independent travel market is an extremely important target market for us.”
By Bev Fearis
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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