Why are budget trains -- like flixtrain, govolta, ouigo -- not included in interrail?
It seems counterintuitive, if they have the lowest running costs I would expect them to be the easiest to include because what interrail pays should be ample for them if it is enough for premium operators?
It just doesn’t make sense to me.
+9I guess a lot of it’s down to history, Interrail was set up by the legacy state rail operators, who are still in control of it. Competition has only come along relatively recently.
There are some challenger/ low cost operators included though: Iryo, Snälltåget, Lumo (in fact almost all the Open Access operators in the UK), Westbahn, Regiojet, Leo Express, European Sleeper are the ones I can think of.
For the rest, maybe it’s probably not worth entering into negotiations with Eurail for the amount of marginal revenue they’d gain.
With Ouigo in particular, they follow the airline model of unbundling and upselling, which is maybe harder to do when selling reservations.
Enter your E-mail address. We'll send you an e-mail with instructions to reset your password.