Science1 publisherNot yet confirmed elsewhere2 min readPublished
Exeter toolkit asks tour operators to make train holidays as easy to book as flights
University of Exeter researchers built a toolkit for low-carbon European holidays from workshops with 50 customers of Inghams and Inntravel. Its recommendations put much of the work of moving holidays onto trains on tour operators and government.
The Scientist · Science desk
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What happened
- Some workshop participants described the difficulties of train and ferry travel and contrasted them with fast, seamless airline booking.
- The researchers sort the barriers into three areas: the social value of how people travel, the infrastructure from booking systems to terminals, and the know-how needed to book and travel.
- Exeter's Ewan Woodley recommends making no-fly holidays visible by promoting the green travel experience, and copying airlines in making travel quick and easy to book.
- The toolkit calls for fair taxation, arguing that flight prices leave out environmental costs and so give air travel a significant price advantage over no-fly trips.
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Why it matters
- decision Operators can start on the measures they control, such as clear journey information, how-to videos and reassurance about disruption, without waiting for tax or rail policy to change.
- constraint An operator can make rail easier to book but cannot close the price gap alone, because the toolkit hands rail reliability, quality and links to Europe to government.
- constraint A firm weighing a rebuild of its rail booking gets a direction from this study but no estimate of how many extra rail trips to expect from it.
The evidence under the toolkit, titled "Travel towards net zero: a toolkit for low-carbon tourism travel," is qualitative [2]. The Exeter team held workshops with the 50 customers about their general experiences of taking the train on holiday [1]. The release reports the themes those conversations produced. It does not say how many participants raised each barrier, and it includes no fare comparisons or booking data. Workshops are good at locating friction from the traveller's side, in the traveller's own words. They are weaker at ranking one friction against another.
Who the participants were also shapes what the workshops could find. Krissy Roe, Inghams' head of sustainability, said the company has spent the past three years expanding its rail options, to the point where more than 30% of its resorts are reachable by train [14]. By that count, as many as seven in ten of its resorts still cannot be reached by rail [18]. Lucy Saggers, Inntravel's sustainability executive, said the company wants "to build on the number of customers who already choose rail for at least one leg of their journey to our walking vacations" [15]. Customers of these two firms are a sensible group in which to find people who have tried the train. I would not expect them to speak for the habitual flyer who has never priced the alternative.
"People don't want to damage the environment when they travel, but at present they face significant barriers if they choose some of the low-carbon options," said Dr. Ewan Woodley of the University of Exeter [5]. His example covered price as well as convenience: "For example, booking a flight from the U.K. to European vacation destinations is easier and often cheaper than going by train." [6]
The release qualifies the design argument with a single word. The Exeter researchers say the mix of marketing, booking processes, infrastructure and support behind decisions has to be understood, "rather than focusing only on customer choice" [12]. Customers keep a part. The toolkit asks them to "lead and lobby" by setting examples of green travel and pressing those in power for change [10].
Roe stated the goal plainly. "Lower-carbon travel should be an easy, attractive choice, not the harder one," she said [13]. Stewart Barr, a professor quoted in the release, argued that a train journey through a country can become part of the holiday experience instead of something to be endured before it starts [17]. He said, "Instead of viewing travel as how to get from A to B as quickly as possible, we can think about the many benefits of 'slow travel.'" [16]
What to watch
- Whether Inghams pushes its rail-reachable share of resorts beyond the more than 30% it reports now.
- Any UK move on flight taxation or rail connectivity to Europe, the two toolkit levers that sit with government.
- A follow-up that pairs the workshops with booking data, or recruits travellers from outside these two operators' customer lists.