Eurostar,
the high speed rail service between the UK and mainland Europe
reported an encouraging start to the year with growth in sales
revenues during the first three months of the year.
Compared
to the same period in 2012, sales revenues grew by 1% to £213
million (£211 million Q1 2012), while passenger numbers remained
stable year-on-year at 2.23 million (2.24 million Q1 2012).
Solid
performance in challenging environment
The
ongoing economic uncertainty throughout Europe continues to influence
business travel patterns in particular as many organisations maintain
a close eye on corporate travel budgets. However, in spite of an
extended period of unseasonably cold and wintry weather the
continuing resilience of Eurostar’s leisure travel market has
helped deliver the solid performance in Q1 reported today.
Nicolas
Petrovic, Chief Executive of Eurostar, said, “This is an
encouraging start to the year in spite of the challenges posed by
both the economy and the weather. Our sales revenues have grown
during a quarter which saw heavy snowfalls and some of the coldest
temperatures on record in the South of England and Northern France.
This quarter’s performance is testament to our enduring popularity
with regular and first time travellers alike.”
Continuing
boom in international traffic
Supporting
the delivery of a solid performance over the first three months of
the year, a number of marketing initiatives both domestically and
internationally have helped underpin the growth in sales revenues.
In
January, Eurostar ran its most successful consumer promotion ever
with 150,000 seats available from only £59 return for travel between
London and Paris, Brussels or Lille. Over the course of the promotion
sales exceeded even those made during the ash cloud disruption in
2010, previously Eurostar’s strongest ever booking period.
Similarly,
an ongoing focus on international marketing campaigns has delivered
impressive growth in both passenger numbers and sales revenues for
travel originating outside the EU. In the first three months of the
year non-EU originated sales revenues grew 10% while passenger
numbers increased by 8% compared to the same period in 2012.
Reflecting
the increasing strategic importance of Eurostar’s website as a
direct sales channel for passengers originating outside the EU, total
sales revenues generated via online bookings in Eurostar’s largest
international market, the USA, have shown particularly strong growth
in the first three months of the year, up 20%.
Ongoing
investment to support growth
Further
demonstrating its ongoing commitment to investment across the
business, Eurostar recently took the wraps off its brand new consumer
facing website. This is a central element of Eurostar’s ambitious
growth plans and has transformed the customer experience when booking
online.
The
new website simplifies and speeds up the booking process and since
launch has reduced the average amount of time taken to book a ticket
by more than 40% from eight minutes to four and a half minutes.
The
launch marks the first stage of a significant investment by Eurostar
in digital technology which will see a raft of new features added to
the site over the coming months.
Nicolas
Petrovic continued, “The transformation of eurostar.com is part of
a wider investment in our business designed to ensure we continue to
offer our customers the best possible end-to-end travel experience.
In addition to this investment in our ‘virtual shop-window’, our
£700m programme of investment in our fleet of trains which
encompasses the refurbishment of the existing Eurostar fleet and the
purchase of 10 new trains is progressing well.”