Travel Innovator Review – Silverrail
Silverrail claims to have invented a sophisticated middleware technology that aggregates rail inventory from multiple sources and delivering it to any partner in any currency and support real-time transactions.
Rail is a $300B market. Silverrail is focusing on Europe which saw a $500B investment in highspeed rail infrastructure. Rail is beginning to take marketshare from short haul airlines. The problem Silverrail has identified is that distribution is still a major disconnect. 60% of the tickets purchased are done on site at the terminals. The cost of selling rail through the current mechanisms is very expensive.
The Silverrail platform approaches the distribution problem from the distributor’s point of view, rather than the supplier side. The platform seems to be aiming to become the GDS for rail. In the same way that the air GDSs combine air product from a variety of sources and deliver them in a homogeneous way, Silverrail is attempting to do the same with rail.
T4 Review: Rail is big, especially in Europe and Asia. If Silverrail is able to leverage the investments in rail infrastructure. With the demise of Wandrian and Amadeus in the mix, rail will certainly be an interesting space of the next few years as new high speed line launch.
