Skift Travel News Blog

German rail operator Deutsche Bahn saw demand for connections between its trains and flights operated by Lufthansa increase 25 percent last year. The increase comes after the railroad and airline expanded their partnership, including more direct trains to the Frankfurt airport, in 2021.

“Where aviation and rail cooperate, we record double-digit growth rates,” said Michael Peterson, the head of Deutsche Bahn’s long-distance rail division that includes high-speed ICE trains, on Monday. “Our expanded feeder services to the largest German airport in Frankfurt am Main are part of this success.”

While Deutsche Bahn did not release passenger numbers, it said demand for these joint air-rail itineraries — or travelers who book both a flight and train connection on a single ticket — fully recovered from the pandemic by October 2021, and then grew in 2022. The data does not include travelers who bought flight and train tickets separately.

Lufthansa has previously said that it sold roughly 575,000 joint air-rail tickets with Deutsche Bahn in 2019.

Increasing the use of rail and ground transport over flights is a big push in Europe’s efforts to cut carbon emissions. France has banned short flights on routes where trains can make the journey in two-and-a-half-hours or less, while airlines and rail operators in Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland have all unveiled expanded partnerships in recent years. Deutsche Bahn, which has partnered with Lufthansa since the 1980s, even plans to join the global airline confab, Star Alliance, as its first intermodal partner.

However, major challenges remain, many related to the passenger experience and physical infrastructure. Wayfinding between flights and trains is limited at some airports, making the transfer experience potentially difficult for those unfamiliar with the process. And, outside of key high-speed rail routes in Western Europe, trains often take significantly longer than the flights they compete with.

Deutsche Bahn, in its statement Monday, highlighted the need for more infrastructure investment in order to expand the number of air-rail passengers. A new high-speed line between Munich and Stuttgart that opened in December will eventually link the Stuttgart airport, and the operator said a high-speed rail link to the Munich airport was needed in the future.

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Sunday unveiled plans for a high-speed train route connecting their respective capitals, Paris and Berlin, beginning next year.

“As a tangible initiative illustrating our will to push forward on decarbonizing our economies and our societies, as well as our cross-border links, we support the deployment of the high-speed train route between Paris and Berlin, as well as the night train liaison, both announced for 2024,” they said in a joint statement. They did not provide additional details, for example which country’s rail operator — France’s SNCF or Germany’s Deutsche Bahn — would operate the planned service.

A direct Paris-Berlin high-speed rail service would eliminate the need for travelers to change trains in either Cologne or Frankfurt. However, as rail blogger Alon Levy noted, without additional infrastructure improvements the new direct service will likely take about the 8 hours in travel, or about the same as the current connecting services.

Flights between Paris and Berlin take roughly 1 hour and 45 minutes, according to Diio by Cirium schedules.

Deutsche Bahn and SNCF operate 24 trains between France and Germany daily, according to the latter’s website. Trains directly connect Paris and other French cities with Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart and other German cities.

German rail operator Deutsche Bahn will reduce travel times between Munich and Stuttgart to under two hours when a new high-speed rail line opens in December.

The 37-mile (60 kilometer) Wendlingen–Ulm high-speed line will open on December 11, Deutsche Bahn said Thursday. The new line will reduce trip times between Munich and Stuttgart by about 15 minutes, or to as little as 1 hour and 57 minutes based on current schedules.

The line opening comes as Germany and other European countries encourage rail travel as a way to reduce carbon emissions. Last summer, Germany’s “9 Euro ticket,” as it was called, proved a popular success getting more people to use trains and buses for local and regional journeys. The country will roll out a new $50 (€49) monthly pass in January in response to the popularity of the 9 Euro ticket.

Shifting travelers from planes to trains is another part of Europe’s effort to reduce carbon emissions. As part of that effort, Deutsche Bahn will become the first rail member of a global airline alliance, the Star Alliance, as well as expand its airline partnerships. In France, the government has gone as far as to ban flights on short routes where trains can make the journey in two-and-a-half-hours or less.

Peter Fankauser is marking his official return to travel after a three-year absence, as he takes on the role of chairman at Germany’s itravel Group.

He has also previously been an investor and consultant at the Cologne-based tour operator.

Fankauser was CEO of Thomas Cook Group from 2014 up until its collapse in September 2019. The travel giant’s bankruptcy left 600,000 tourists stranded, 21,000 employees without jobs and a financial black hole $12 billion.

Fankhauser was grilled by UK politicians afterwards, alongside other execs, as the government tried to figure out what went wrong. At the time much was made of the millions former leaders made, through salaries and bonuses, despite the company collapsing.

According to reports, Fankhauser received almost $10 million in salary and bonuses between 2014 and 2018.

Another former CEO, Manny Fontenla-Novoa, last year became president of a new joint venture formed by the merger of Logitravel and Spanish agency group Viajes El Corte Ingles.

If German lawmakers have their way, the advancement payment of air tickets could become a thing of the past, as a response to the huge disruptions of flights this summer across Europe, according to new proposed law in the German state of Lower Saxony. The local state minister renewed calls to introduce a “pay as you fly” (PAYF) model, where payment for plane tickets is processed upon check-in, reports BTN.

The German Business Travel Association (VDR), which has been advocating for a PAYF model since 2021, praised the move. VDR President Christoph Carnier said, “Advance payment for air travel is an outdated standard that should be replaced by timely electronic payment.”

Lufthansa launched a ‘Pay as you fly’ program for corporate customers in Europe in March 2021, where fares are typically more expensive and the booking process slightly different.

Corporate hotel booking platform HRS has bought PayPense, as it pushes further into expense management.

Terms of the deal, announced on Thursday, weren’t disclosed, but the acquisition follows its purchase of billing company Itelya in 2021.

Staff at Germany’s PayPense will officially become HRS Pay employees when the acquisition formally closes in August.

Interestingly, HRS now describes itself as a “global corporate travel and payment technology platform.” HRS, which stands for Hotel Reservation Service, said buying PayPense enhances its “growing compilation of efficient corporate payment offerings.”

PayPense is used by companies to let employees use digital payment technology to pay for all work-related purchases. That helps ensure compliance to budgets while also capturing relevant data for auditing, steering and even sustainability metrics, the company said. Using supplier and localized data, PayPense can capture carbon emissions of individual expenses.

“With the full integration of PayPense, our complete end-to-end spend management platform provides unmatched visibility of level-3 data, multi-category invoice digitization, and superior VAT reclaim automation — all available globally via any payment provider,” said said Kurt Knackstedt, chief growth officer at HRS Pay.