All Aboard Eurostar!

Next stop, Amsterdam.

Eurostar, the train service that travels through the Channel Tunnel (Chunnel) between England and France, will offer direct service to Amsterdam beginning in spring of 2018.

That is only part of a systemwide enhancement for Eurostar, which has been in service since 1994 and under its current name since 1996.

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The only high-speed train service linking the U.K. to France and Belgium—and soon The Netherlands—Eurostar is the largest Channel Tunnel customer. The train whisks passengers from one city center to another, with the trip from London to Paris taking 2 hours, 15 minutes; London to Brussels 2 hours; and London to Lille 1 hour, 20 minutes. With a change in Paris, Brussels or Lille, travelers can connect to over 100 European destinations.

For agents, the potential for sales is strong as demand from the U.S. is booming, according to Nicolas Petrovic, Eurostar’s CEO.

“The increase in sales is really extraordinary,” he said, “and we will be building on it with new routes and a product that improves on an already excellent one.”

Amsterdam service will start with two trips daily each way, with plans to build from there. The company is constructing its own small station in Amsterdam, which will be connected to the main station in that city.

The train will run along a route that travels to Brussels as an extension from the Belgian capital with no need to change. Passengers will be able to travel anywhere else in The Netherlands free of charge within 24 hours of arrival in Amsterdam. (That is also true for Brussels arrivals and rail travel within Belgium.)

“With this addition,” Petrovic said, “we will be linking Europe’s four most exciting capitals within a four-hour radius.”

In addition to the new Amsterdam route, the company’s new fleet is 75 percent deployed, with “very modern, wider and higher cars – giving a real impression of space,” he said.

Passengers are on Eurostar trains when they travel from London to Paris, Brussels, Lille, Calais, Lyon, Avignon, Marseille, Bourg-Saint-Maurice—and in 2018, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Other destinations, such as Bruges or Bordeaux, require connections to other European railways.

There are many ways to book Eurostar, including directly through the company’s website, its partner Rail Europe, tour operators and third parties. Jane Ashman, head of sales for Eurostar, said the company has a strong partnership with Rail Europe and that “they are our basic distribution system. We are bookable through them on the GDS, so they are really an extension of us.”

The Rail Europe website includes an agent section with online training, educational resources, discounts and more. It also has its own in-house system for agents.

“We help agents to sell our product through Rail Europe, including webinars, sales teams, etc.,” said Ashman. “There is a lot of support for agents. When I speak to agents they tell me Americans are used to flying everywhere because of the size of their country. We find that after their customers try [rail travel] once, it sells itself.”

Commissions are at “Rail Europe’s discretion,” she said, adding that agents earn most of their pay on other elements of a Eurostar package, such as hotels and tours. Fares on Eurostar are designed to be competitive with those of airlines so that a London-Paris trip will start at 29 British pounds (about $38).

The beauty of the Eurostar product is that “we appeal to every sector,” Ashman said. “We have filled a train with 750 children. And then we might have more mature customers who rode trains in Europe in their early 20s and now want to do it in a more luxurious fashion."

Petrovic said the typical pattern for North American travelers is to fly to London because intense competition makes those transatlantic fares very low. They stay for a few days, then go to Paris or elsewhere on the Continent for four or five days before flying back to the U.S. Ashman said Rail Europe can put any trip like that together.

“The major thing for us is that we are connecting four major cities in Europe,” she said. “A lot of North Americans will include London, Paris or Amsterdam in any European trip, and we offer a very nice selection of options for them.”

The important thing for the travel agent community to know “is that travel by train is very appealing.” Ashman said. “You go from city center to city center. If you look at a schedule it might seem quicker to fly, but it is actually a lot longer. Also, travelers go through security before they get on a train, so they come out in their destination and head directly into the city.”