March 12th, 2013 - ebookers.com adds rail product to their site, becoming the first European Online Travel Agent (OTA) to sell rail tickets alongside flights, hotels and car hire, in partnership with SilverRail Technologies.

Previously, consumers looking to book a trip on an Online Travel Agency weren't able to include train travel, but would need to visit a separate rail-only booking website. Now, ebookers.com is able to offer customers a one-stop-shop for planning and purchasing all of their travel.

Despite the increasing popularity of rail, the process for planning and booking train travel has remained more complex and difficult than booking flights. "With the increasing popularity of rail travel in the UK, we believe it is essential for us to offer train tickets on our site," said President of ebookers.com, Tamer Tamar. "We pride ourselves on becoming the first OTA to offer UK rail to customers, thus providing them with the best choice of products to meet all of their travel needs. Further down the track we plan to make rail available in other countries we serve and add the option to package rail with other travel products, such as hotels."

With more and more people choosing to travel by rail in Britain there is an increasing need for train tickets to be easily purchased alongside other travel options. Rail travel within Britain is currently at its highest usage level since the 1920s, with over 1.4 billion journeys made in the 12 month period covering 2011/12. According to the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC), this is a 37% rise since 2000.

"We are committed to making purchasing rail travel as simple as possible. This partnership with ebookers.com is significant because it is a large step towards achieving our goal of making rail just as easy to book as flights," said SilverRail CEO, Aaron Gowell. "Our partnership with ebookers.com is the first of its kind and we think other OTAs will soon realise the value of including rail within their product portfolios. We hope to see more partnerships like this one covering more countries and further expanding the consumers' access to rail travel."

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About ebookers.com
ebookers.com, one of Europe's leading online travel agents, is a brand that is owned and operated by Orbitz Worldwide (NYSE: OWW). It offers a huge selection of choice from over 250 airlines, over 110,000 hotels around the globe and car hire from most of the major international brands. ebookers.com sells a full range of travel products online and over the phone through 24/7 call centres.
www.ebookers.com

About SilverRail Technologies, Inc.
SilverRail has built the first global distribution platform for passenger rail, allowing rail operators and travel sellers to easily connect with each other. The SilverCore platform aggregates global rail content into a single, unified system through direct supplier connections, standardising the search, booking, and fulfilment processes. By removing the complexities of selling rail, SilverRail enables global rail search irrespective of operators, geographies and currencies. Today, SilverRail sells rail tickets through OTAs, online booking tools and travel management companies on rail carriers in the United Kingdom, Benelux, Spain, Germany, the US, and Canada, with Sweden live later this year.
www.silverrailtech.com

Media contact:
Lauren Taylor
Atomic
silverrail@atomicpr.com
+44 (0)207 025 7517