Train bookings on Trip.com Group are on the rise for travel in Europe and Asia, where a growing number of travellers are looking for the “ideal sustainable journey”.
In this regard, the CEO of International Train Ticket at Trip.com Group, Dennis Li, pointed out that the customer base is truly global, with 50 per cent of them under age 35.
The same also revealed that over 16 million people have embraced sustainable travel choices, with Gen Z showing the strongest inclination towards sustainable products, such as choosing to travel by train, in contrast to other age demographics.
Li also added that in late 2021, PalGreen Energy was introduced to Trainpal, a feature that allows users to track the carbon emissions they help reduce by choosing rail travel across several platforms. As a result, since its inception, over five million travellers have been motivated to choose train travel, resulting in a collective reduction of over 60,000 tons of CO2 emissions.
According to him, a year after launching green tourism objectives on Trip.com, sustainable travel offers have been integrated into several business segments, including trains, flights, rental cars, and corporate travel.
Meanwhile, split ticketing in the United Kingdom has become one of the best-received features.
Previously, Europe planned to reduce carbon emissions by switching from domestic flights to rail travel.
Based on a study conducted by Mabarian, a company specialising in Tourism Intelligence, there is an opportunity to reduce one million tons of CO2 emissions annually by replacing short-haul flights that cover distances of less than 2.5 hours or up to 500 km with higher-fast trains.
Data provided by the European Office for Statistics, Eurostat, have revealed that during the period 2015-2019, there has been a continuous increase in the demand for passenger transport, resulting in an overall increase of 10.2 per cent.
Such data show that this growth peaked in 2019, with a peak of 414 billion passenger kilometres (pkm). However, strict measures and a reduced number of trains in operation since March 2020 led to a significant decrease in rail passenger transport in all EU Member States.
Compared to last year, rail passenger transport suffered a staggering 46.0 per cent drop in performance, falling to 224 billion pkm. The most major decreases occurred in the second and fourth quarters of 2020, with reductions of 73.7 per cent and 53.8 per cent, respectively, compared to the same periods in 2019.
