Railbookers' new trade team, agent tools and incredible portfolio In The Spotlight
Video transcript
With Railbookers' head of trade sales and development – UK, Raj Mistry and TTG Media's Charlotte Cullinan.
Charlotte: Welcome to our In The Spotlight video with Railbookers. Raj, let's start by talking about the trips and destinations that are proven popular for departures this year, and tell us how far in advance – or even last-minute – agents can book with you.
Raj: Thank you so much for having me on here with yourself, and TTG as well. So I think if you look at some of our top-selling destinations that we have this year for 2025, we have the likes of Switzerland, we have Italy. These are our most popular ones that we always have. But then we've had Norway, and Scandinavia – it's phenomenal in terms of what it's offering. Portugal and then Canada, these are our top five selling areas at the moment.
But globally, we're offering lovely independent tailormade holidays throughout the globe. And as you can appreciate, we are seeing a number of clients booking a lot later, so we can do last-minute bookings as well as booking out as far as 2027, so two years out.
Charlotte: Fabulous. Thank you. And give us an idea of what a Railbookers holiday looks like.
Raj: Think of us as a tour operator. We include anything that a tour operator offers. So think of us offering hotels, your flights, your sightseeing, with transfers and rail being the main component of the holiday. This is the key thing that we're doing.
So when you think of Railbookers, it's anything that a customer wants, in a tailormade itinerary. So whether it be a short stay or a multi-centre holiday, going coast-to-coast journeys, or a luxury trip of a lifetime along some of the iconic routes around the world, this is what we do.
We can also add rail. This is quite an important part for those clients who don't want to fly. We can add rail from the UK travelling into continental Europe. We can add rail from the UK stations as well, which is quite exciting. So it makes that convenience of a trip and again, especially for those clients who don't want to fly.
Charlotte: Thank you. And not all agents will be aware of everything they can do with Railbookers, including your luxury products, so tell us what's available across your portfolio.
Raj: So again, when you look at our what we do, our relationships include a lot of the national rail companies in Europe, in North America and Canada.
So when you're considering the wide range of holidays that we include, they do include luxury rail journeys, hotels and companies that have some world-leading portfolios. Just giving you a few examples here. So you've got customers that may want to combine something like your Swiss railways with the Bernina and Glacier Express, VIA Rail in Canada with the Rocky Mountaineer, the Indian railways with The Maharajas' Express.
Or if you're traveling in Italy, you've got Trenitalia in Italy with the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. These are all classic rail journeys, but then we combine those with our great range of properties across the globe, ranging from say, Mecure, Holiday Inns, Hiltons, through to luxury brands like Fairmont, Intercontinental and Kimpton hotels.
And then the key thing – what makes the holiday – is the experiences on the ground. So the sightseeing, which can be very immersive, and they can be either part of group, or they can be individual and private to the client.
Charlotte: Thank you. And tell us how you're supporting agents.
Raj: There's two in our team. We've got Levi, who's our key account manager, and myself, who's heading up the trade team. We're here to support all of our agent partners and continue to grow successful partnerships Levi and I, providing some very bespoke training to each of our travel partners, depending on what they are looking for in terms of training and understanding of our brand, our product depth and the offering that we offer.
We're offering a lot of virtual training. We're offering the opportunity to meet at conferences and things like that as well. So really an opportunity to do that. But also, we are seeing a number of our travel partners looking at doing virtual consumer events as well. So these are things that we can offer for a lot of the agent partners.
Charlotte: Thank you. And finally, I know you have a really useful travel agent toolbox. What will agents find in that and how can they access it?
Raj: So our travel agent portal has a wealth of downloadable material. So we have what we call our Travel Agent Reference Card. This is a very simple guide that agents can take, they can download and use it as a day-to-day reference for all destinations that we cover. But then we have downloadable flyers and brochures for the likes of Switzerland, Italy, Australia, Canada, and customisable flyers as well. So if they want to do particular itineraries you'll see those in their social media assets and a lot more.
All they need to do is go into the top right-hand side of our website, click on the little figure and on there, just pop in there their Abta number and the email address and they'll be able to access all that information.
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