SilverRail introduces multi-country rail ticketing in Europe and North America

SilverRail Technologies has announced that its rail search and ticketing platform SilverCore integrates multiple rail connections from around the world into a single booking system. This platform removes the complexity of selling rail by allowing customers to search and buy tickets for multi-country journeys with two or more train operators in a single booking. It also allows online travel agents (OTAs), traditional travel agents and travel management companies to offer simplified rail search and booking, include rail as part of holiday packages and display rail fares side by side with air thus making the booking process as easy as booking flights.

The SilverCore platform now includes rail connections in the UK, US, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Additional rail operators across Europe and elsewhere in the world will be added later this year and in early 2012. No longer will booking a multi-country train ticket require trawling multiple websites each with separate logins, and requiring payments in different currencies.

"Europeans are investing US$250 billion in 48 high speed-rail projects, China plans to lay down 10,000 miles of high-speed tracks by 2020 and President Obama presented a US$53 billion proposal to Congress for a high speed rail project that will provide transport to 80 per cent of Americans within 25 years,” said Aaron Gowell, CEO and co-founder of SilverRail Technologies. “We are at the beginning of a real rail renaissance, but unless buying tickets becomes easier, we won’t be able to realise the full potential of all these projects,” Gowell added. “We need to make sure that rail tickets are as easy to buy as flights. They need to become available on websites of online travel agents and included in holiday packages.”

SilverRail Technologies' SilverCore is the only platform to offer an integrated rail API, where different rail content can be accessed by simply changing station codes. Through direct supplier connections, standardised search, booking and fulfilment processes, SilverRail enables access to global rail irrespective of operators, geographies and currencies. With SilverCore, distribution partners can focus on selling rail while SilverRail handles the underlying complexities of each rail operator's ticketing system.

For more on SilverRail go to silverrailtech.com.