The Business Travel Magazine Oct/Nov 2019

Rail spend management / Ground transport
One SME customer is
setting up a business
in London and has negotiated
rates with Caledonian Sleeper
on the basis of some 20
journeys a months”
“We are seeing good uptake of these.”
Otherwise, if a company shifts business
from road or air to rail, Virgin may give a
bespoke deal.
However, that switch isn’t easy. “The
opportunity to move business from air
travel to rail is diminishing because in the
last few years there are fewer domestic air
routes,” says Associate – Ground/Rail
Services for Black Box Partnerships, Nick
Bamford. “It is interesting to see that LNER
has launched the Azuma on the Edinburgh
route. It can reduce that service to four
hours, which will really eat into the time
advantage of air travel; otherwise, travel is
mostly in a car now and that is much
harder to quantify.”
Easy rider
Great Western Railway (GWR) offers
discounts only where a company needs to
hire a carriage or a large number of seats
on any one train. However, Caledonian
Sleeper takes a more flexible approach.
Its Flexipass buys a carnet of 10 journeys,
valid on all Highland or Lowland routes,
and it will also negotiate according to
volume of spend.
“When comparing our prices to the cost
of a hotel in London or Edinburgh, plus
flight and transfers to city centre, it can
make real economic sense to use us. Also,
travellers are not getting up at the crack
of dawn, plus they are travelling while
sleeping, saving time as well,” says
Managing Director, Richard Flaherty.
“We talk to companies about how often
they will be travelling with us to see if we
can offer special rates. The starting point is
not very high because we are quite small,”
he says. For example, Flaherty says one
SME customer is setting up a business in
London and has negotiated rates on the
basis of some 20 journeys a month.
The company introduced new carriages
in April that were built by Spanish
manufacturer CAS, bespoke to Caledonian’s
requirements. Club carriages have an en
suite shower/loo and there is fast wifi and
multiple charging points throughout.
“Business travellers are increasingly
opting for Club rooms because they see
it as overnight accommodation and en
suite is pretty basic in most travel policies,”
says Flaherty.
The new rolling stock has upped
Caledonian’s game: “We have always had
corporate relationships but now we have a
product that is suitable for the corporate
world and we are looking forward to
growing those relationships over the next
few months,” adds Flaherty.
Delay repay – 50% refund for 30 minutes’
delay, 100% for an hour or more – in
varying forms is offered by TOCs, either
payable direct to the traveller (Caledonian
Sleeper, Virgin Trains) or to the purchaser,
whether TMC or traveller (GWR).
But Black Box’s Bamford warns that when
organisations such as Rail Guard or Travel
Compensation Services (TCS) claim it on
companies’ behalf, “They match delays with
a corporate booking file and highlight how
many journeys were ticketed and delayed,
but they take a fee for doing so.”
However, according to Director of Client
Partnership for BTD, Vanessa Bailey:
“Travellers are not interested in claiming
delay repay and third parties monitor
progress automatically to get refunds, so
clients do not have to do anything to
benefit from them.”
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