Briefing

Here’s what Europeans from 7 countries think of rail booking processes

October 22, 2025

Barriers to ticketing are pushing travellers away from trains, but the EU has now a chance to fix this. A new poll by YouGov for T&E looks at passenger experience at booking journeys

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Slide deck

Rail operators are currently under no obligation to display competitors’ journeys on their own booking platforms. They don't have to share theirs with external booking platforms either. Both situations create issues for travellers. The EU’s Single Ticketing Package plans to fix these.

It will also decide if passengers must be allowed on the next train without any extra cost in case of a missed connection, including when it's a train from a competing operator. And finally it will rule on whether the journey climate footprint of each individual mode of transport is to be shown in search engines.

Key findings:

Almost two out of three long-distance rail users encountered difficulties while booking tickets.
Guaranteed connections, ease of long-distance tickets reservation and visibility for all fare types in booking websites are top concerns of passengers
43% of long-distance rail passengers would increase their travelling if ticket booking was easier.

Policy recommendations:

The Single Ticketing Package must ease life of European rail travellers. T&E calls to:

Set a mandatory obligation for all rail operators to let all platforms resell their tickets including all fares and extras (bike tickets, seat reservations etc.)
Require major ticketing platforms to display all journeys in their geographical scope, including those from competing rail operators
Require all ticketing platforms to include the climate footprint of the different transport modes in the engine search
Enshrine in law a guarantee to be able to go on the next available train if the traveller missed their connecting train due to the first one being delayed

Methodological note:

All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 10,514 adults in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, and Romania. Fieldwork was undertaken between 4th - 16th September 2025. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been given an even weighting for each country to produce an ‘average’ value.

For the first question, respondents were asked about their rail travel habits for medium- and long-distance journeys. The distances were differentiated as follows:

Medium-distances: 50-300 km
Long-distances: > 300 km

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