Ticket sales for Eurostar’s long-awaited London-Netherlands have finally opened, with the service due to start on April 4.
The service will run twice daily from London’s St Pancras station at 08h41 and 17h21, stopping first in Rotterdam, before terminating at Amsterdam Centraal, less than four hours later. While the London-Amsterdam route is direct, passengers on the return service will need to take the Thalys train to Brussels for security and passport control before boarding a Eurostar train. Once the UK and Amsterdam have completed agreements to enable passport control at the Rotterdam and Amsterdam departure points, the service will run direct. This is anticipated to happen by the end of 2019.
London-Amsterdam is one of the busiest air routes in Europe, but with the Eurostar competing in the same price category as the low-cost carriers, that might soon change. More than four million travellers fly between the two cities every year. Travel on Eurostar between London and Paris has doubled since the route launched and similar increases are anticipated for the London-Amsterdam line.
Nicolas Petrovic, ce of Eurostar, says: “The launch of our service to The Netherlands represents an exciting advance in cross-Channel travel and heralds a new era in international high-speed rail. We know that many passengers do not enjoy the experience of flying short haul, and now they have another choice.”
The train is also being promoted as the better option for the environment, and as a more refined and productive space for business travellers, who no longer need to spend hours milling around an airport but can enjoy quick boarding, on-board plug sockets and free WiFi. While the actual price of the Eurostar ticket might exceed that of an LCC ticket, once all the additions are considered, the total cost of travel for air travel is much higher.
