InTheSnow’s Ben Clatworthy spent 10 minutes with Daniel Elkan, Co-Founder of Snowcarbon (snowcarbon.co.uk), the definitive guide to ski resorts by train.
> Daniel, firstly, congratulations on your recent win at the World Snow Awards for the best transport innovation, it must be great to be recognised for your work promoting sustainable travel?
DE: Thanks Ben, it is great to be recognised for travel innovation, but the only thing that really counts is making real change on the ground – so that more skiers are able to travel to the Alps by train, and have more enjoyable and more sustainable journeys to the Alps. The award is great in that the industry recognises the progress we are making, but there is still a massive imbalance that trails behind the demand for train travel.
> What was the initial idea behind Snowcarbon?
DE: Quite simply to help more skiers travel to ski resorts by train instead of having to spend all day in airport queues, waiting for transfers, or on long drives. When some friends first invited me on a ski holiday 15 years ago, I didn’t have a clue about winter sports. Like many others perhaps, I imagined that it didn’t take long to reach the slopes by plane. Two holidays later I was beginning to realise that flying to the Alps takes about 9–10 hours, door-to-door, spent moving from one tedious queue to the next. I didn’t like it, and the glum faces around me told the same story. So when I spotted a railway track close to Sauze d’Oulx, a resort in Italy, I wondered whether we could have travelled by train instead. I researched the journey, and discovered it would have taken around the same time as flying! From then on myself and friends travelled by train, and we began to really enjoy the journeys. At that time there was a massive lack of information about train options to ski resorts. I started writing about it for newspapers and magazines, and then launched Snowcarbon to try to create a useful information source to help other skiers do the same thing – make the journey part of the holiday, and reduce pollution while doing so.
> Since its launch in 2009, you’ve constantly updated the website with new tools, guides, and features, most notably your Journey Planner – how does that work?
DE: We really want the site to be somewhere you can find out exactly what it’s like to travel by train to the Alps, and how best to do it. The Journey Planner is a unique tool that shows the best train schedules to great ski resorts, including transfers from station to village. It is powered by a unique, hand-researched database. Skiers are finding it really useful for planning journeys, and the really exciting thing is that it can be given to hotels and chalets to use on their websites, so they can communicate train options easily too. The Journey Planner links to guides to describe what each train is like, and soon will link to reviews of the journeys by other skiers.
> What’s your biggest gripe about travelling to the Alps by train?
DE: We need more tour operators to be able to offer train packages, and rail companies, like Eurostar and SNCF, need to get their act together and start making it much easier for tour operators to include the train as part of their packages. The solution is really simple: the train companies just make some train tickets on key routes available at a fixed price for participating ski tour operators. Voilà. Do they currently do this? No. That’s why so many skiers end up flying when many would rather travel by train. The way that train operators deal with travel companies is a big problem. Snowcarbon is working to create solutions to this – because the status quo is madness, forcing skiers to fly. Also, every skier going by train should be given a bottle of bubbly at the start of the journey. Why isn’t that train company policy?
> What new routes might train companies launch to help skiers travel to the Alps?
DE: A direct service from London, or indirect via Lille, down to St Gervais. This route would service so many fantastic resorts, including Les Gets, Morzine, Avoriaz, Samöens, Flaine, Megève, Les Contamines, St Gervais, and Chamonix. Considering Eurostar launched a service from Lille to Swiss resorts in the Valais, this route to St Gervais should be a no-brainer, because it reaches more popular resorts with a simpler journey.
> What do you wish more skiers understood about travelling to the Alps by train?
DE: Three things: firstly, if you need to change station in Paris, you can do it easily by pre-booked taxi. The driver meets you at the end of the Eurostar platform with a name card, and whisks you across to your onward station, pretty seamlessly. Second, going by train really is as fast as flying in many cases, and so much more fun and sociable – you can make the holiday start on the train, not in resort. And thirdly, in many cases it doesn’t even cost more than flying, if you book in advance.
> And finally, what’s next for you, and Snowcarbon?
DE: We’re creating a series of new films that help show what the journeys are like – both daytime and overnight ones. And we are bringing together skiers, snowboarders, and ski industry companies, as well as forward-thinking organisations, to create a movement with the aim of improving the possibilities for skiers by train – including a new Snow Train – with a disco at one end, and family area at the other. One day, soon, people will look back and wonder why so many skiers used to fly. Real change does take time, but we are battling to speed it up – for everyone’s benefit.
