Today SilverRail Technologies, a B2B rail content consolidator in Boston, has landed its biggest operator yet: Deutsche Bahn (DB), Germany’s state-owned railway.
SilverRail will distribute DB tickets for national and international itineraries, initially through GetThere, Sabre's travel and expense tool. It's not available immediately, though, as SilverRail is in the final stages of accreditation with GetThere.
As part of this first deal, DB content will become available for other clients who access SilverRail's self-booking tools as long as they sign commercial agreements with the German rail bosses. DB remains the merchant of record and handles settlement.
A great endorsement
Landing DB is a major coup for SilverRail, a company that aspires to beat Amadeus, a leading global distribution system (GDS) for airfare, in the race to become the first GDS of rail. DB is arguably the world's third-largest passenger rail operator.
SilverRail consolidates the sale of rail tickets into its B2B platform, SilverCore, which standardizes and structures the live data and provides the inventory, schedules, and prices via an API. Without a tool like it, travel managers and OTAs need to either have direct connections with railways or use multiple websites to book a single multi-country journey.
More to come
SilverRail still hasn't finalized a deal with SNCF, France's state-owned railway -- and the other linchpin of any credible push into distributing European rail content globally.
While SilverRail doesn't yet have France as a market, the company says it will announce that it has entered another European rail market by September. Its developers are currently working on the coding and technical work to bring online three, as-yet-unannounced, European rail operators.
SilverRail currently operates in rail markets in the UK, Spain, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands -- as well in the US (via Amtrak).
Its demand side is also strong, according to the company.
Alain van West, the company's new vice-president of business development, told Tnooz:
Our pipeline is very healthy at the moment. We have many OTAs, travel management companies, and other businesses actively interested in connecting to our systems.
NB: Image courtesy EmsiProduction/Flickr/Creative Commons.