RailAgent.com, a distribution system for
rail tickets, will offer Rail Australia passes and point-to-point
options in Australia by Oct. 15, according to Charles de Gaspe
Beaubien, vice president of business development.
He said technology
developer Wandrian, which owns the RailAgent brand, aspires to be
the only company to provide global distribution for rail services.
The addition of Australia rail to its product line reflects that
goal.
Besides being
available to agents in the U.S., RailAgent is up and running in
Australia, New Zealand and the U.K., de Gaspe Beaubien said. Canada
will come online by year's end, he added.
The company
provides booking and fulfilment services for Amtrak, BritRail,
Eurail and Trentitalia plus other rail passes for travel in Canada,
Europe and Japan and point-to-point tickets for some specialty
trains.
RailAgent provides
the back-end functionality for Eurail.com.
In addition,
RailAgent is available for private labelling, which, de Gaspe
Beaubien said, could be practical for large agencies, trade groups
and companies that host large numbers of home-based
agents.
The company is in
talks with some consortia, he said. Smaller agencies, he continued,
have the option of linking their Web sites to RailAgent.
In many cases,
according to de Gaspe Beaubien, the RailAgent software, called
RailKey, is linked directly to the participating rail systems for
real-time booking.
This is especially
important, he said, in the case of Trentitalia because agents have
been "struggling" to book Italy.
The company refers
to itself as a GDS in its category, and de Gaspe Beaubien said
there is a place for a rail-specific booking source because agents
have limited access to rail in the traditional GDSs.
Amtrak sells
through ARC and in the GDSs in this country, he said, but the U.S.
railroad "needs our help overseas," and the same is true for other
rail companies: They need distribution outside their
homelands.
The ticket stock
for the various companies is unique to each one, which is why
RailAgent is a fulfilment service, as well, de Gaspe Beaubien
said.
Wandrian was
founded by Mike Fuller and Michael Coleman, who developed the
software.
Since gaining
additional capital investment to expand the business, the company
has been led by CEO Bernard Frelat, formerly of Rail
Europe.
To
contact the reporter who wrote this article, send e-mail to Nadine
Godwin at [email protected].