Rail Europe says India was its second largest market in 2023

Despite visa appointment delays and logjams, Indians travelled in big numbers to their favourite European destinations such as London, Switzerland, France and Italy last year.

India became the second biggest market for the first time for Rail Europe in its 90-year history in 2023, the rail-ticketing company’s president and chief executive, Björn Bender, told ET in an interview. Its top market was the US.

Rail Europe sold about 5 million train tickets worldwide for European destinations last year. About half a million of these were sold in India, said Bender. Its revenue grew 60% globally last year, he added.


“India was one of the top five or six markets always. But now it has come up to number two. China, Japan and some other markets have been much slower to recover. We are investing even more with our local teams and also through our travel agents to expand our footprint here,” he said.

“India was roughly one year ahead before the rest of the world in terms of a pre-Covid recovery in 2022. Last year, India was 11% above 2019 levels for Rail Europe's business,” he added.

Claiming to be the reference brand for European train bookings, Rail Europe has business-to-consumer partners such as MakeMyTrip, Thomas Cook and Swisstours in India, while its business-to-business partners include TBO Ltd and Otilla. Its catalogue of products focuses on 200 rail providers such as SNCF, SBB, Eurostar, Trenitalia, Italo, DB, Renfe, ÖBB, SNCB, NS, OUIGO Spain and National Rail, and rail passes including the Swiss Travel Pass and Eurail Passes.

Bender said both B2C and B2B channels are growing at the same pace in India. “We are expecting a CAGR of at least 20% for India for the next few years. We are talking about a European rail industry worth 70 billion euros a year,” he said.

“Tickets worth about a billion euros are probably sold outside Europe, and this amount is increasing heavily. We want to maintain our market share in the non-European markets and want to grow with markets such as India,” he added.

Bender said countries such as Switzerland worked hard and invested in resources to ease the visa challenges for Indian travellers last year.

“Indians love Switzerland. London, France, and a bit of Italy are still the markets generating the highest demand for train tickets from India,” he added.