Rome2rio launches onsite bookings for UK rail journeys
Rome2rio, the multimodal search specialist, has today announced the launch of onsite bookings for all UK rail operators, effective immediately. Powered by SilverRail, the new capability allows Rome2rio users to search its site for available transport options between any UK locations, and then book selected rail segments directly on the Rome2rio web site. The company is focussing first on the UK to address the needs of its European customers, who account for more than 65% of monthly site traffic.
Discussing the launch, Rome2rio CEO Rod Cuthbert said: “The UK is the first of a number of rail markets we’ll launch over the coming months. With this announcement, we’re serving notice we intend to offer a complete multimodal booking capability worldwide, with the distinct advantage over rivals of a powerful search engine capability that allows users to perform the discovery phase of their travel planning on the same site as the booking itself.”
Explaining the company’s strategy in more detail, Cuthbert said “That global, multimodal search capability attracts consistent, highvolume and rapidly growing traffic to Rome2rio, from users asking questions like ‘How do I get from Split to Ancona?’ and ‘How do I get from Dublin to Birmingham?’. Answering those queries properly requires a full complement of air, rail, bus, rideshare, ferry and selfdrive options, which today’s OTAs simply don’t have. But we do, and we are seeing growing demand for exactly this broadbased functionality. Besides this important SilverRail integration, we’re also announcing a partnership with Distribution for bus bookings and a partnership with Travelport that will allow us to experiment with onsite flight bookings in selected markets. Further announcements in the coming months will allow us to round out our global, multimodal vision more completely.”
The company says it will soon roll out SilverRailpowered support for onsite bookings of journeys in markets including Spain, the US, Canada and Sweden, with further onsite booking launches in the flight, rail, bus and ferry sectors on the horizon.
