Eurostar and Thalys to merge
Train operators Eurostar and Thalys are to merge. By the end of the year all high-speed trains operating between Brussels, London, Paris, Amsterdam and Cologne will display an updated Eurostar livery. The name Thalys will be dumped.
Eurostar’s new logo is a star representing the connections between all the cities. “Brussels stands at its centre” says Gwendoline Cazenave, Eurostar CEO: “It’s here our HQ is based and it also forms the centre of our network, at two hours travel from all destinations”.
The Eurostar was inspired by the “Etoile du Nord” (The North Star), the name of the original Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam service.
The Eurostar and Thalys websites and apps will also be merged. The merged company hopes to carry 30 million customers a year by 2030. That’s double passenger totals of 2022. Eurostar and Thalys felt the big impact of the pandemic: passenger totals were down 30% at the beginning of last year compared with pre-pandemic. Three months later passenger numbers had reached 80% of pre-pandemic numbers. By the summer the figure was 90%.
Eurostar and Thalys combined carried 19 million passengers in 2019, a total the company expects to equal this year.
