- They’re more convenient for door to door travel, getting you right into the city center.
- No one will ever come to your seat to tell you to put your phone in ‘train mode’.
- No security hassles mean any delays are less likely to make you pull out your hair.
- They’re better for the environment.
Here’s why it’s bigger than you think
0 to 431 km/h in 5 months
“On day one I woke up at 5am. It kind of set the tone for the rest of the project. The biggest challenge was the fragmented market we were going into. It’s not like Hotels and Flights where there are strict regulations and standards, the ticket instructions and the way travelers board trains are completely different, as is every rail operator. Add to that, every market and user has different needs.”“We’ve prioritized and built features for business travelers so they won’t have to go to different places to get the same functionality. We want customers to have what they need, such as seat bookings and preferences, all in one place. As an example, on the Eurostar platform you’re stuck when you want to return from Amsterdam to London as there’s no Eurostar train back. With our platform, we’ll show you alternative train routes that you can book from Amsterdam to return to London.”
Luca Cozzolino - Product Owner
“We borrowed a lot from flights, but with trains there’re more options available, averaging 50,000 a day. We redesigned for this by filtering with fixed time windows – 2 hours or less – which we hadn’t thought of at first.”“There were also intuitive features we wanted to implement. Because customers have an account with us we can easily populate and integrate data. So, if you have a rail discount card in the German market as an example, and you want to add it for a provider, you’ll only need to add it on your first booking. The next time you search a German route, those card details will show in the system and you’ll just need to select it to see all the rates with the discount already included.”
Chris Roy - Lead User Experience Designer
Simple, online booking in 1 minute 10 seconds
“We went from 2 to 100 companies booking trains on the platform in 2 weeks – demand was that high. We listened to every piece of feedback and implemented workable changes as soon as possible, which we plan to keep doing in future.”
Nadine Spencer - Product Adoptation Specialist
“Rather than going back and forth between tens of emails with our customers to find them the right trains which is time consuming, they can now book easily by themselves. Start to finish, a customer can, in fact, book a train on the platform within 1 minute 10 seconds!”
Ambra Ceratto - Customer Support Team Lead
What’s next for TravelPerk and trains?
“We want to build an even better user interface for train results, making it even faster and easier for our customers to find trains. Then, it’s about seeing what more they want, because we want business travelers to have everything they need in one place. We want to accommodate the travel needs of someone who has to travel from their workplace in Hamburg to the city’s airport with their discount card and reserve a compartment seat, then fly to Rome for a meeting and take a train from there to Naples to meet a potential new business partner who’ll treat them to the best mozzarella in town before finally closing the deal and flying back to Germany, all within the TravelPerk platform.”
Luca Cozzolino - Product Owner
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