The travel industry is, generally, experiencing a boom, especially air travel, which continues to expand with ever-increasing numbers of passengers using increasingly different airports and utilising many different types of airlines. Differing segments of the travel market are being satisfied by ever-differing types of airlines: from niche start-up operations featuring all business class configurations plying the transatlantic routes, to the so-called low cost carriers who often create, as opposed to satisfy, demand for travel between previously obscure locations in one country to even more obscure destinations in another. In between sit the traditional airlines, previously – and in some cases, still – state controlled and who invariably connect capital city with capital city or commercial centre with commercial centre.

Indeed, Europe, like much of the globe, has never seen such an increase in the demand for air travel and for travel generally. People seem to want to travel for rest and relaxation and people want and need to travel for business. Additionally, Europe is currently in an economic boom cycle and Europe through the European Union has also expanded dramatically in size, increasing both its gross economic product as well as increasing the population numbers of its member constituents.

Together with this pent up demand for travel, stimulated partly by the expansion of the EU and thus visa-free travel, suppliers of the travel product are finding that demand is outstripping their ability to supply, or at least pushing it to the limit. New communication routes that seemed illogical not so long ago are now served by competing airlines and the airlines themselves see even greater possibilities to expand and grow both their size and their route network. Along with competition comes reduced fares and in turn these reduced “real” fares encourage more people to travel. The cycle continues.

One has only to look at Bulgaria as a prime example of this scenario. Since visa-free travel was introduced in 2001, air travel and travel generally by Bulgarian passport holders has sky rocketed. Sofia Airport alone is seeing more than 20 per cent year-on-year growth in footfall, a large slice of which is created by the population simply having the ability to travel easily and freely and partly by the economic acceleration the country, and especially the capital, is witnessing. Cast your minds back to 10 years ago and Lufthansa, the largest foreign carrier had roughly 14 flights per week to Sofia; next year they will have closer to 44. Evidence of this growth in demand for travel if ever proof was needed.

So everything in the garden is rosy? Almost, but not entirely.

Business booms and so does the cost of oil, yet despite the higher costs of fuel and therefore higher air fares in the form of less than discreet taxes, this does not appear to deter the will to travel. Where air travel is under attack is threefold: from the green brigade, from governments and from the perceived hassle factor at airports – all three not necessarily separate issues.

The fashionable subject of carbon emissions is definitely this year’s hot topic. The environmentalists have successfully engaged in PR spin that almost seems to make the air passenger guilty of some heinous crime. Carbon offsetting was a “could you repeat that again please” statement a couple of years ago but nowadays corporations and organisations, whose success depends on their staffs’ ability to travel, meet and ultimately conduct business and who still wish to be seen as being “whiter than white” in the corporate world, are using carbon offsetting in a bid to make them both feel better morally and also to send the right signals into the corporate world that they are caring and sharing. Strange that many successful private companies have sprung up making nice profits out of operating and running carbon offsetting schemes on behalf of larger organisations and still there is no international or European standard that benchmarks “offsetting”. Perhaps from the corporate traveller’s own or from his or her employer’s perspective being seen to be doing the right thing is as much about being seen to be politically correct as its is about being effective.

Governments too are doing their bit to kill the golden goose in the form of taxation. Taxation of whatever and how ever much they think they can get away with when it involves air travel. Taxes on air travel are now often more than the actual base cost of the ticket. Go back 10 years and such taxes were an irrelevance; alas no longer, taxes on airfares to the US, for example, can be 200 euro. The fact is that governments quickly realised that the boom in travel provided an easy target to enable them to swell their treasury coffers. Differing types of taxes mean little when one reads them on a flight ticket yet does this money collected go to safety and security and does environmental tax really go to help and promote environmental issues? Don’t be silly, and what’s more governments will never actually say what the funds are used for.

The longer term issue here is now that across Europe governments have got used to collecting spurious taxes for their state budgets they will find it harder to do without them once excuses of security and the environment disappear. One might cynically say that it is not in their interests for such debates to disappear off the radar. There may well come a day when other easy targets are identified as revenue sources – how about shipping for example? Did you know that shipping is responsible for as much as twice the carbon emissions as aviation yet no taxes of note are levied on it? Why? Obviously it is because shipping is less people orientated and despite being more polluting is therefore less easy to hit as a quick fix tax source.

So we come to the third threat – airports, airport operators and the hassle factor.

In defence of airports and their operators, events over the last few years rather caught them out. They too are at the whim of government instruction and often have little ability to plan and implement change but rather have to react at extremely short notice. Again one might argue that it is governments that shape airports and who have a vested interest in their efficiency or lack of it. It is not airports who pass laws that result in sprawling queues forming at check in, at security and at passport control. Europe and respective governments pass laws, airports react.

Thus the perceived hassle factor of taking off shoes and belts, taking out laptop computers and not being able to take bottles of water or any liquids or medications through an airport or via a connecting airport even if bought air-side in a departing airport, are fast becoming the biggest turn off to travel. Queues come and go but the 30 minute or one hour queue has almost become the norm at many airports – that’s per queue and there are several to navigate through. We also see quasi government personal, such as security, working against airlines and airport interests.

A good example was seen recently at Paris where police wanted to see e-tickets of passengers before check in. As any bright spark will tell you e-tickets are a form of ticket-less travel but that did not deter the police from wanting to see them with resultant lengthy queues forming and frustration levels rising. Travellers’ blood pressure and stress levels when passing through airports are reportedly higher than being mugged at knifepoint – one can see why.

So whilst aviation is booming there are threats as we have described to its sustained expansion. There is also a fourth threat to it: rail travel.

Long seen locally as being an option of “last resort”, rail travel in other parts of Europe by contrast is fast becoming the norm rather than the exception to the rule. Rail is being widely tipped to become at least as important and maybe even more important than air travel in the transport mix in the next decade.

So what has happened to suddenly make rail travel so “in vogue” and will rail travel ever replace or even rival air travel as a fast and cost effective mode of transport? Or is a fast and reliable pan European rail network simply a theoretical concept rather than a realistic modern day proposition?

Rail has often been viewed as being a disjointed jigsaw puzzle with each nation having its own network that seldom knitted into the networks adjoining it. It was invariably viewed as being slow and if anything, down market and unfashionable. It was arguably the French and the TGV network that set about revolutionising the way rail was viewed and the way in which rail operated. Even then, the development of European rail networks has been slow to gather momentum – until now. Maybe it is the environmentalists who’s words are being listened to, or maybe it is the cost element that makes train travel more attractive i.e. no spuriously imposed taxes, or maybe it is the fact you can glide into a railway station a few minutes before the train leaves and board a train in hassle free surroundings and what’s more you can take on board a bottle of water, hair gel and toothpaste in your overnight bag. It should also be noted too the vast improvement in the actual rolling stock or more accurately the quality of carriages in which people travel.

Whatever the reason, train travel is most definitely back in vogue aided also by on board internet connections that allow people to work on their laptops whilst travelling and the ability to use mobile phones at will. Thus the door-to-door travel experience by rail for many journeys is now perceived as being as expedient as air and maybe also cheaper, both in the initial cost outlay in the form of ticket costs as well as in ensuring less “down time” to the busy executive who can utilise the time on the train to good effect. It is also fashionable.

Already the Paris-Brussels route is totally by train (or bus), with no airlines challenging the overland options. On the London-Paris route over 60 per cent of the market is now in the hands of rail travel and so it goes. High-speed rail links are springing up like mushrooms and within the next year or so it is expected that Paris-Amsterdam and Madrid-Barcelona, which incidentally is the world’s most popular air link, will become dominated by a high-speed rail network.

Where France has the TGV, Spain has the AVE (Velocidad Espanola) and Germany has the new ICE (Intercity Express) trains. The high-speed rail network so far covers 5000km of track across Europe. By 2010 this figure will be 7000km and by 2020 will reach 15 000km. Across Europe these high-speed networks in turn are complimented by upgraded national networks that are efficient, reliable and timely. From Denmark to Italy and from Spain to Germany, trains have become a significant force in the travel mix. A force that is starting to attack air links both within national boundaries and between different countries.

Did you know that nine out of 10 of Europe’s most popular air links are domestic flights? An obvious economic target for any high-speed rail network.

Where the air alliances lead, train networks are learning to follow. Several rail operators across Europe including Eurostar, SBB in Switzerland, SNCF in France, Deutsche Bahn, SNCB in Belgium, OBB in Austria and NS and HAS in Amsterdam have formed Railteam, an airline style alliance with the aim of improving connections and streamlining cross border timetables, information and ticketing. The EU itself wants to create standard licences for train operators and bring signal and security systems across the continent in line on all major tracks in an attempt to increase efficiency and choice.

The bad news in all this is that it is hard to see Bulgaria and the Balkans in either the short or medium term being “networked” into a pan European system. The technical side of timetable synchronization and even electronic ticketing is comparatively easy but for Bulgaria to benefit from rail as an efficient mode of travel into Europe, massive investments will be required in both the rolling stock as well as the track network. That is not to say that such will not happen for it undoubtedly will, just how long it will take and who pays for it will be another question.

Additionally, several types of rail passes are also available to be issued for travel in and around the European Rail network.