RISING RATES of hotel rooms a month before Christmas is making cheaper ‘Eurail passes’ increasingly popular among the city’s outbound tourists. It promises to make lodging and boarding expenses in the European circuit affordable for them during the tourist season.
A Eurail pass, considered 40 per cent cheaper than any other mode of transport in the European region, offers single or multi-country passage to tourists wanting to travel across Europe on a highly integrated rail network.Travel trade analysts say there could be about 500 families (considering a group of two adults and two minors) falling in the higher middle class bracket opting for the Eurail system every tourist season from the city. This is apart from the usual corporate travellers who take their leisure trips to Europe every tourist season on leave travel assistance (LTA) and are also increasingly opting for Eurail system as corporate budgets for LTAs are certainly shrinking.
Most budget travellers to Europe had the advantage of cheaper hotel accommodation a year ago as the number of corporate travelers going for business to the United States were much larger in number compared to the European Union countries, they said. The Eurail network covers countries such as Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Italy , Hungary, Romania, Spain and Portugal. “The Eurail system which covers the entire European circuit even offers a week’s travel pass with choice of first and second class travel which have become popular with both leisure and business travellers from the city”, informs SK Saxena, regional manager, Travel Corporation of India (TCI) Pvt Ltd.
He said quite a number of travel agents across the city offer Eurail packages. “I can certainly vouch for the fact that tourists opting for the Eurail system had been going up enormously from the city,” said Saxena. “There is a fair amount of awareness among Lucknowites about economical modes of transport available in Europe which had made Eurail system the most affordable mode of transport especially among budget tourists”, he added.
{{/usCountry}}He said quite a number of travel agents across the city offer Eurail packages. “I can certainly vouch for the fact that tourists opting for the Eurail system had been going up enormously from the city,” said Saxena. “There is a fair amount of awareness among Lucknowites about economical modes of transport available in Europe which had made Eurail system the most affordable mode of transport especially among budget tourists”, he added.
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