Trainline has competitive strengths and structural tailwinds that position the business for significant long-term growth.
Please click the following icon to download an introductory investor presentation on Trainline and its investment case:
Competitive strengths
We enable millions of travellers to seamlessly search, book and manage their journeys through our highly rated Trainline website, mobile app and B2B partner channels.
- 4.9/5 star rated app
- c.136 million platform visits each month
- Most downloaded rail app in Europe
Our innovation focuses on creating a simple, consistent, friction-free experience for booking and managing travel. We bring together all carriers into one app while providing smart, real-time travel information and self-serve capabilities like journey changes and refunds.
- Simple, intuitive user interface with all carriers, fares and railcards in one place
- Seamless, friction-free booking experience
- Digital tickets and railcards, smart personalisation, real time travel info
- New AI Travel Assistant
- Money-saving features: SplitSave, Price Prediction, Ticket Alerts, Best Fare Finder, Railcard Finder
- Self-service change of journey, automated refund capability
We have developed a highly scalable, marketing playbook in the UK, which we are deploying across our core markets in Europe. This helps drive customer acquisition at scale while maintaining a low cost per new customer acquired (“CPA”)
- >80% new customer acquisition through free channels in the UK (e.g. SEO)
- Sophisticated CRM strategies to drive engagement and frequency
- 92% app share of UK Consumer transactions through the app
- 69% app share of International Consumer transactions through the app
As a platform business, we offer our innovative retailing experience directly to customers through our Trainline-branded businesses, while also giving carrier partners and other travel businesses access to our retail solutions to offer to their customers.
- 270+ rail and coach companies with deep integrations across 40 countries
- c500 engineers, data and tech specialists
- End-to-end digital retailing and ticketing solutions for rail carriers at a lower cost to serve
- Provides travel sellers access to our rail content through one connection - our global API
At Trainline, we recognise the importance of building and sustaining a strong, experienced management team. Click on the link below for more information about our management team.
Tailwinds for growth
Rail market shifting to online and mobile ticketing
- Customers are increasingly booking tickets online, now 55% of all ticket sales in UK
- This has largely been driven by an increasing use of barcode read digital tickets (or etickets), doubling in last two years to >47% of ticket sales
- Trainline has championed etickets for several years as a core part of our mobile app proposition
- >90% of all journeys eticket-enabled in the UK
European domestic rail markets liberalising at pace, creating need for an aggregator
- The EU’s Fourth Railway Package (December 2020) opened domestic rail markets to competition
- As a result, carrier competition is emerging across France, Spain, and Italy, with the major carriers there entering each other’s markets, e.g.
- Spain
- Since 2021, Spain has gone from one high-speed carrier – the national incumbent Renfe – to now four different carrier brands competing across its five largest high-speed routes (represents €1.5 billion in annual passenger revenues
- Average fares on the top five high-speed routes have reduced by 45% compared to 2019 levels, while industry passenger volumes have increased by almost 80%
- Italy
- Trenitalia and NTV Italo already compete on the high-speed network, generating €2.0 billion of annual passenger revenues
- SNCF are set to launch operations in Italy from 2027, becoming the third nationwide competitor
- France
- Renfe currently run cross-border services between Barcelona-Lyon and Madrid-Barcelona-Marseille
- Trenitalia are due to expand their services on the South East Network (Paris-Lyon-Marseille) from summer 2025, with Renfe due to launch services thereafter (represents over €1 billion in annual passenger revenues
- Three new carrier brands are due to launch domestic services from 2027/2028 on several routes across France (a further €1.5 billion in annual passenger revenues
- Channel Tunnel competition expected to arrive from 2028/2029. Several new entrant challengers are planning to compete on the lucrative €1.7 billion route1 (TrenitaliaEvolyn, Virgin and Gemini Trains all announcing plans to launch competitor services to Eurostar)
- Spain
- Trainline is well placed to scale across Spain, France and Italy as carrier competition becomes more widespread over the next few years. The three markets today represent an addressable market of around €17 billion, expected to grow to €23 billion by 2030
- By honing our aggregation playbook, we plan to position Trainline as the aggregator of choice. We can help more customers make the right choice when booking tickets, while removing friction that can sometimes arise when travelling by train
- We believe this will serve as the catalyst to scale our International business, given liberalised high-speed rail routes across Spain, France and Italy are estimated to generate c.€12 billion of annual industry passenger revenues by 2030
Governments investing to shift people on to trains as a greener mode of transport
- Trainline’s purpose is to empower greener travel choices, encouraging people to switch to rail from car and air travel
- Rail generates 87% less CO2 emissions than air travel and 67% less CO2 emissions compared with car travel, per passenger
- UK and European governments continue to encourage a modal shift to rail, and increasing their investment to meet net-zero emissions goals:
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The EU is targeting a 55% reduction target for CO2 emissions by 2030, and the UK has a reduction target of at least 78% by 2035 and a legally binding target to reach net zero by 2050
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The EU Commission has highlighted rail as playing a key role in the EU becoming climate-neutral by 2050. It targets the doubling of high-speed rail traffic by 2030 and a tripling of high-speed rail by 2050.
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