We’re ready to roll…
At 196Destinations.com we’re exploring what makes it fun to travel by train, and why people still often choose the plane! If you want to get involved then please contact us.
With the Climate Emergency declared in many places, how can people still choose air?
Well actually, often the train costs more, possibly due to the lack of competition. But more operators are coming into the European market. More night trains are being announced regularly, and not just by the state operators. OBB and Nightjet are doing really well at expanding their night train network – partnering with SBB etc. RegioJet are increasing their services to Croatia. Snalltaget are now operating from Stockholm to Berlin. EuroNightTrain and Moonlight Express are coming soon.
The potential is high. It is starting to feel that there can be less flying, and people can still be connected all over Europe. Train travel is low-carbon travel. With claims ranging from 6x less carbon, to 20x less carbon compared with flying.
But there’s still challenges. On price. On service. On quality. And on just providing what the travel consumer wants. Making changing connections easy. Helping people travel long distances by train.
The budget airlines, such as Vueling, Ryanair, and EasyJet have had 20 years to perfect their booking systems. However, there’s still no unified cross EU booking system for trains! Crazy.
We need to compete with airlines!
Whilst there are portals that give the aeroplane as an option across the EU, we don’t believe that is the right approach.
Trains, coaches, and overland is the way to go in the medium- to long-term.
Especially after people have had their first post-Covid travels.
Are you ready to ‘get on board’ ?
Which hats sound like they may fit you? More than one is fine.
We’d like to overlap with our first people in Berlin or Málaga. But remote will become more possible in time – especially for mob programming developers.
We are very early-stage, and the below roles are unpaid. Think ongoing hackday for now. And at this stage, we are looking for the people that can help figure out how to make this work and be monetisable, whilst encouraging people to travel by train through us. You need a problem solving, startup mindset! Contact us to get involved.
Head Of Country Community Managers -Germany, France, Spain, Sweden, Croatia. What makes people travel in your area? Let us know how you engage people.
Product Managers – a sense of experimentation, data junkies, travel business knowledge, and love of overland travel. What travel experiments did you want to try?
Social Media Managers for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. You want to grow a community of travellers. What platform do you love? How have you engaged people already?
User Experience Experts. An awareness of what works (in travel) already. And a desire to find ways to overcome challenges to get the consumer what they want.
API Integration Experts. The data is out there Mulder. Maybe you work with Node, Go, Python.
Developers in Ruby On Rails. Any level!
(Come on. What other platform did you expect 😉 ) You need to be collaborative in nature. Pair programming or mob programming will be the normal. TDD with rspec is how you think. Part-time is just fine.
General Enquiry: We would love to hear from you if you just want to get involved.
LET’S GO. LET’S MAKE TRAIN TRAVEL AS EASY AS ALTERNATIVES.
Contact us and let us know what you would like to do 🙂
Cheers, Ian and team.
196Destinations 