Eurostar launches new Christmas trains to ski resorts with tickets from £99
Eurostar has launched new train routes that'll take snow lovers from London to the Alps for less than £100.
The Eurostar Snow service will go from the English capital to Lille where passengers change to the rail company's continental service which will take them into the mountains. Tickets went on sale on 31 August and can be purchased on the Eurostar website.
The new service offers customers a hassle-free and sustainable alternative to flying with more stops in the Alps than ever before. Eurostar Snow will whisk travellers to top ski resorts, such as Chambéry, Albertville, Moutiers, Aime-La Plagne, before arriving in Bourg-Saint-Maurice as its final destination.
Departing from London on 16 December, the service will run for eight weekends throughout the ski season. Leaving on Saturday morning, the train will arrive at the slopes in time for après-ski. The journey back to London will depart Sunday morning, arriving at St Pancras International in the afternoon.
The train gets from London to the Alps in around eight hours (Getty Images)Francois Le Doze, chief commercial officer of Eurostar Group, said: "We're proud to offer our customers a sustainable travel option to the Alps by launching our first connecting service as Eurostar Group. With a quick and easy connection, competitive pricing and five stops to choose from, passengers can enjoy a seamless experience with us from the city of London to the snow-capped mountains of France.”
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Fixed fares start at £99 one-way in standard and £149 in standard premier. Passengers benefit from a generous luggage allowance offering each traveller two suitcases, one piece of hand luggage and skis or snowboard at no extra cost. If the cheaper tickets aren't available, then avoiding the extra luggage fees of a flight may make up the difference.
Passengers travelling from France back to the UK will go through check-in, security, and immigration on arrival to Lille Europe before continuing their journey to London. The train leaves London at 9.01am and gets into Bourg-Saint-Maurice at 6.20pm.
On the way back the train departs the skiing village at 8.26am and gets back to London at 4pm.
Earlier this month it was announced that Eurostar tickets from London to Paris will continue to be available for just £39 each way, the train company's boss has said. Chief executive Gwendoline Cazenave has pledged to keep the firm's cheapest fares between the French, English and Dutch capitals at the current price, despite significant inflationary pressures from electricity cost rises and issues fully loading trains due to the post-Brexit border situation.
Bargain hunters will be able to find each way tickets from London to Paris and Amsterdam for £39, although you have to buy a return to get the deal. Due to the rise in leisure riders and fall in business passengers, the tickets are selling out earlier than they use to. There are some available in September however.
“The first, really important thing – and I am really committed on this – is that our lead-in prices have not moved," Ms Cazenave told the Independent. “London-Paris, it’s still £39. I really don’t want to raise our lead-in fares. Our costs are increased, energy costs have been multiplied by three. So yes, we have profitability issues, but we really want to keep these lead-in prices.”
After a difficult pandemic in which much of the travel between the UK and the Continent ground to a halt, Eurostar bosses decided to focus the service on its main routes and largest stations. The company was criticised for cutting some of its services, including trains from Kent and direct trains between London and Disneyland Paris.
One issue the train company was facing is to do with capacity after new passport checks were introduced post-Brexit. Peak capacity at London St Pancras was 30% lower than in 2019, at 1,500 passengers per hour, the Financial Times reported in 2022.
It takes an average of 15 seconds per passenger longer to process people with a British passport. In a bid to reduce this delay Eurostar introduced the first of what could be many facial scanners.
On July 18 business class customers at St Pancras Station began walking straight through border control to the bag check without flashing their travel documents. The London station launched SmartCheck, a contactless fast-track facial biometric check-in system supplied by British tech firm iProov that is the first of its kind in the UK, and on any rail company in the world.
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The process is simple and could, if this small roll-out is successful, be installed at airports and train stations across Europe and the world to significantly speed-up travel.
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