Germany to expand railways in tourism boost
Germany is planning a huge expansion of its long-distance rail route in the hopes that it will boost tourism across the country and outside of the big cities.
This news comes as the European train network keeps on growing. Constantly evolving to allow more countries and towns to be connected, the expansion of rail routes across mainland Europe is designed to boost tourism without increasing flights. It means that instead, visitors can go ‘euro-railing’ and reach more places by train.
Germany is the latest to plan a major expansion. FlixTrain, one of the country’s largest operators, has announced plans to work with other train operators to connect with more regional destinations. Currently, the company only operates long-distance routes between the major cities of Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfurt, and Stuttgart.
This expansion will mean that passengers will be able to use one ticket for those long-distance routes, and then transfer to a different operator under the same reservation. It’s a similar format to the way Eurostar works, or UK train services where a single ticket to a smaller location covers trains to larger cities and transfers to smaller services all in one.
However, this new system will make organising trips not only easier for tourists to navigate but also much simpler and make the country far more accessible.
The new scheme will create connections between Hamburg to Kiel, Lübeck or Flensburg, as well as to cities in the south like Ulm, Tübingen and Kaiserslautern. This will not only help tourism by making smaller towns more accessible but also allow them to benefit from the industry and influx of visitors. But it will also potentially help stop over-tourism in the country’s big cities by making it easier for people to visit other parts of the country rather than just the well-known areas.
In 2023, it’s estimated that around 34.8 million international tourists visited Germany. This was a 22% increase from the previous year as the tourism industry continues to grow. The plans to expand the train network hope to boost this so the country can continue to benefit from outsiders visiting, but hopefully visiting a wider range of areas in the country.
From now on, around 200 additional cities can be reached with the combined tickets, which consist of a FlixTrain and a regional train journey,” said a spokesperson from Flixtrain, as reported by Euronews.
