The FINANCIAL — Train and bus tickets for different European countries will be sold in Tbilisi as a result of the entrance of Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s main railway transporter, on the Georgia market.
Georgian Avia Service Agency (GASA), the official representative of Pegasus, one of the largest low cost Turkish airlines, has become a partner of Deutsche Bahn in Georgia.
For those who prefer payment by cash instead of going online, GASA has started offering printed tickets. The main advantage of this service is the consulting and advice offered to Georgian travellers by the company.
“GASA is a representative of Deutsche Bahn. Passengers from Georgia will now have the opportunity to plan how they are going to continue their travel after their flight’s arrival in Europe. They can travel via train to cities which direct flights aren’t available to, such as in East Germany. DB is a very successful German railway company which represents a European transit artery. It’s equipped with the absolute newest technology and is accessible to everyone,” said Levan Elizbarashvili, CEO of GASA.
Deutsche Bahn AG was founded in 1994. Today, it is one of the world’s leading passenger and logistics companies and operates in 130 countries. Every day about 290,000 employees, of which about 190,000 are located in Germany, are committed to ensuring that customers are provided with mobility and logistical services and that the related rail, road, ocean and air traffic networks are operated and controlled efficiently.
“In the Passenger Transport division DB Group transports in its trains and buses Europe-wide over ten million passengers daily. In the Transport & Logistics division over 415 million tons are transported via rail and around 81 million shipments with land transport annually in our European network. In our world-wide networks over 1.2 million tons of air freight and over 1.6 TEU of ocean freight are transported. In addition, in Germany, DB Group operates the longest railway system in Europe with around 33,700 km,” DB officials note.
During the 2010 financial year DB Group posted revenues of about 34.4 billion EUR, and an EBIT of a good 1.9 billion EUR after adjustments for special items. The company’s core business is the railway in Germany with more than five million customers every day in the passenger transport segment, and more than a million tons of freight shipped via rail. More than two million customers travel via DB buses in Germany every day. Deutsche Bahn operates more than 31,000 train runs daily on its approximately 34,000 kilometre-long, modern rail network, which is also open to competition.
“Honestly, we expect success while cooperating with Georgia,” Bjorn Bender, Head of Sales and Marketing, Austria and Eastern Europe of DB, told The FINANCIAL. “Many Georgians travel to Germany on a frequent basis. Most of these travellers are using a car rental service to travel within domestic Germany. We want to show new options to our Georgian clients and make them capable of getting from the aircraft directly on to the train.”
“Usually customers have to fly to Germany and then buy ticket there for further transportation within the country or around Europe whereas now they can buy DB tickets here in Tbilisi directly. That’s the benefit for Georgian customers and hopefully they will use it,” Bender said.
According to company officials, every day DB transports more than two million customers by bus. And every day DB AG operates over 26,000 train trips on its modern 33,000 kilometre long track network, which is also open to the competition.
“Our company intensively carries passengers to Germany. We held a small survey. We discovered that the average Georgian passenger rarely stays, and doesn’t spend much time, in the city where the flight is scheduled to arrive. Often they are visiting cities where there isn’t an airport at all. It’s very popular to fly to Düsseldorf and then go to Essen. There are no flights scheduled directly from Tbilisi to Essen and the journey becomes much more expensive in that case. So Georgian travellers then buy tickets for further transportation from Düsseldorf,” Elizbarashvili said.
“Buying tickets beforehand is a much cheaper way of planning a trip. While buying transport tickets in Germany, Georgians are competing with other passengers who have the opportunity to buy DB tickets in a much easier way. The opportunity to buy DB tickets in Tbilisi is an additional way for consumers to plan their trip and buy a flight and railway ticket in combination. In this way people save on extra expenses which was the main aim for us,” Elizbarashvili said.
“Deutsche Bahn is an enormous company with huge experience and a long history. Being in partnership with DB is a big honour for us. It’s big experience for Georgia as this company has about 1 billion 950,000,000 passengers. The scale of Georgia for this company is very small but the location of our country is very interesting as we live in the centre of the Caucasus and Tbilisi represents the very heart of the country. So we are very happy with our partnership with such a well-known company as DB,” Elizbarashvili said.
The company’s railway activities in Germany, about seven million passengers and 1,138,000 tons of freight transported every day, is its core business.
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