We want to be more sustainable, but we also want to enjoy the journey and complete it with less stress. Cheap tickets and “showcase trains” are also at the heart of this new trend.
The boom in rail travel is a secret, a reality that has been slowly brewing for some time, but now seems to be exploding. We started noticing it in 2018, when the conscientious Swedes Maja Rosen and Lotta Hammar launched No Flights 2019.
“It’s a campaign where people promise to stay grounded for the next year, as long as we get a total of 100,000 Swedes to promise the same. In this way, together we can make a significant change for the climate. It is also a way to show each other and our political leaders that many of us are willing to do anything to save the climate,” Rosen told us at the time.
At the same time, the Swedish term Flygskam, “the shame of flying”, was slowly catching on, while the term tagskryt, which referred to pride in travelling by train, was on the rise.
A few months later, the Netherlands proposed banning short-haul flights and replacing them with train journeys of up to three hours, something that is currently being discussed in several European countries. To show that Europe by train is possible, a map called “Euro Night Sprinter” was developed, showing the continent connected by comfortable and inexpensive night trains.
The recently launched Vienna-Paris night train has proved popular and the new train between London and Edinburgh has also attracted a lot of interest.
According to the Pinterest Forecast 2023 report, this trend is set to intensify next year. The report analyses the searches of more than 400 million people who use the platform each month to discover popular new content from around the world.
“Travelling by train offers faster boarding, more legroom, beautiful scenery and a smaller carbon footprint, which is why Generation Z and millennials love the term ‘train travel’ or the aesthetics of train travel,” the platform explains.
The advantages of train travel include. Reliability – trains are usually very punctual -; Flexibility – most domestic and international train tickets allow for not just one, but multiple date changes -; Peace of mind – airports are often a source of stress and are often located on the outskirts of cities -; Ability to carry a lot of luggage – there are no restrictions on liquids – …. And, of course, there is the romanticism that inevitably accompanies such slow travel, even in its most unsettling form: the now legendary Interrail.
“In the aftermath of the pandemic, people are looking for ways to travel as environmentally friendly as possible. They chose trains as their main mode of transport and bragged about them, hence the new term: “brag trains”. Pinterest concludes: “As countries create new train routes, introduce sleeper cars and offer free services on some routes, train travel will become a ticket by 2023”.
Among the “trains to show off”, there are several candidates, such as, of course, the Orient Express, which runs along some of Europe’s most beautiful routes, or even Renfe’s tourist trains. Meanwhile, there is no doubt that cheaper fares – thanks to initiatives such as Ouigo, which has just launched a new line between Madrid and Alicante – have also popularised travel on this mode of transport, which will be more in demand until 2023.
