Eurostar Sales Climbed As Business Demand And Journey Length Revived

Online, January 15, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Eurostar Group Ltd., the rail operator that runs services through the Channel Tunnel, said sales climbed 12 percent last year as business demand revived and passengers took longer journeys.

Revenue gained to 760 million pounds ($1.2 billion) in 2010 from 675.5 million pounds a year earlier, Eurostar said in a statement today. The number of passengers carried by the rail operator rose 3 percent to 9.5 million.

The company is augmenting its core service of high-speed trains between London's St. Pancras International station and Paris and Brussels by offering connecting services to the south of France and to the Netherlands. Eurostar said it's also benefiting as passengers switch from air travel to rail.

"We have seen a good increase in the business market, we have more people travelling who are paying higher fares," Chief Executive Officer Nicolas Petrovic said in an interview today in London. "We are really seeing a trend of people across Europe who want to switch to high-speed trains."

The company said in October that it plans to invest 700 million pounds to buy 10 express trains from Siemens AG and add routes as it seeks to fend off competition from Germany's Deutsche Bahn AG. The German state-owned rail operator aims to offer services through the tunnel from 2013.

The closure of European airspace by a cloud of volcanic ash in April that forced people to travel on routes such as Frankfurt to London via high-speed rail, helped change people's perception of the distances that you could feasibly travel by train, Petrovic said.
The executive is aiming to increase the share of passengers that travel on longer Eurostar routes beyond the company's core destinations of London, Brussels and Paris to about 35 percent from about 20 percent now.
"It's a bit longer but it's quality time on the train," he said.