How rail travel becomes a "cruise on the rails"

Elias Bohun knows most of the train connections between Europe and Asia by heart. However, the founder of an online travel agency for climate-friendly long-distance rail travel is finding manual bookings to be costly. That is why he is now working on the first digital platform for train travel across national borders.

According to Elias Bohun, international train timetables are a good indicator of what is happening in the world. "You can't ride over every conflict," he says. For the Viennese entrepreneur, this is not just a geopolitical statement, but also an economic one. In 2020, he and his father founded an online travel agency for long-distance rail travel and quickly received thousands of inquiries. But then came the coronavirus pandemic, then the Russian war against Ukraine and most recently the new violence in the Middle East.

Elias Bohun came up with his business idea on a train journey through Vietnam.

The Traivelling website still lists connections such as Vienna-Hanoi, Vienna-Tokyo and Vienna-Bangkok. However, these destinations are currently not bookable: to travel to Asia by train, you would have to travel through Russia, a country at war. Destinations such as Morocco, Tunisia, Georgia and places throughout Europe are feasible. However, bookings are currently on hold. The team is working on a complicated, hands-on project: programming a platform that transfers individual bookings into an automated system.

What started out with a lot of enthusiasm and a somewhat shirt-sleeved approach proved to be barely profitable as demand increased - especially for trips within Europe. The manual effort involved in making bookings was simply too great. Traivelling charged a commission of 15 percent per trip, and with several hours of planning work plus subsequent services, the bottom line was nothing. "But the inquiries were always there, which motivated us to keep going," says the 23-year-old.

The most sensible routes for tourists - and the cheapest

Soon there will be "the first rail booking website for international train journeys across several national borders", which will find the most sensible routes for tourists and include buses and ferries, he announces. Further individual selection options are being planned. Where e-tickets are not yet available, for example in Serbia, the offer will be expanded to include paper tickets. All available discounts will be included in the automated search. In order to promote climate-friendly travel, Traivelling's declared goal, the difference between low-cost airlines and trains must ultimately be reduced.

All in all, a mammoth task. The technical implementation revealed more than half a dozen problems: there is no international database for train connections and stations, as has been the case with flights and airports for decades. Within Europe, there is virtually no standardization in the rail sector; for example, there are no station codes as there are for airports. Each station has a different name at each interface, even though it is the same station. Timetables and bookings are separate in many systems.

More than 15,000 hours of work have already gone into the platform, says Elias Bohun. "Integrating a single country into the booking system can take several months with a complex timetable. If there are night trains, that makes it even more complicated." A crowdfunding campaign was recently successfully completed, enabling the company, which has won a number of start-up awards, to hire two more programmers. The team now has eight employees.

Several hurdles to overcome

Much has already been achieved - from connecting interfaces and third-party providers to direct contracts with national rail companies and optimizing the search algorithm to meet the specific needs of train passengers. Summer vacations in 2024 should be plannable and bookable via the new platform, says Elias Bohun.

In the meantime, Traivelling presents daily connections on Instagram with estimated prices that are possible but still have to be organized independently for the time being: from Hamburg via the Faroe Islands to Iceland, from Stuttgart to Sicily, from Munich to the Balearic Islands or from Berlin via Paris to Barcelona.

In addition to the platform, Elias Bohun also wants to continue operating the online travel agency in future and use it to process individual requests for long-distance travel. "Travel to Georgia, for example, cannot yet be offered digitally," he explains. 95 percent of destinations are to be covered automatically, however. Traivelling will probably take a commission of eight percent for these offers, and 15 percent for personal offers via the travel agency. Travelers will have to take care of accommodation and visas themselves.

Taking the train to Vietnam yourself in 2019

The idea to found Traivelling came about because long-time climate activist Elias Bohun and his girlfriend traveled to Vietnam by train themselves in 2019. After months of research, they traveled for 16 days and crossed six countries, with the journey costing around 650 euros per person. They got their tickets in some cases by adventurous means: because in some countries you could only buy tickets on the spot, but you couldn't get a visa without one, they had to find agencies and private individuals who bought and deposited the tickets for them after transferring the money. Because it annoyed him that the bookings were so complicated, he founded Traivelling back home.

On their own trip, Elias Bohun and his girlfriend visited cities and countries during the day and saved money on hotels by sleeping on night trains. "It was like a cruise by rail." The old saying "The journey is the reward" became an insight for the Viennese. He finds the slow way of traveling relaxing. He raves about how comfortable the trains of the Danish State Railways are. The trains in Eastern Europe are also comfortable, just slower. "But the best night train is the Caledonian Sleeper between London and Scotland, it's like a five-star hotel on the move."

He believes the biggest problem with train travel at the moment is the delays caused by Deutsche Bahn, "it's better everywhere in Western Europe". Incidentally, there is always enough time to change trains on the trips planned by Traivelling, he emphasizes, so that missed trains have very rarely been a problem. The founder recently traveled to Turkey, Valencia in Spain and Scotland with his girlfriend and family. And came back with another insight: "Spending so much time together brings us closer together."