Canada’s VIA Rail Ties Up With China’s Hainan Airlines

Posted by on Dec 18, 2014 in Blog | 0 comments

VIA Rail’s intermodal partnership tie-up with Hainan Airlines may be just the thing needed to boost VIA’s financial bottom line and help spur Chinese tourism to Canada.  VIA is a crown corporation and enjoys a hefty $500+ million subsidy a year from the federal government to service remote areas.  Whether it is profitable is another question.

Hainan is an internationally top-rated airline, China’s fourth largest, with over 23 million passengers carried in 2012.   Chinese tourists made over 100 million trips overseas last year and now are the biggest spenders abroad.  By 2020, Chinese outbound tourism is expected to top 200 million.  Canada is well known to many segments of Chinese for its natural beauty and wide open spaces and connecting to a VIA train after landing in Canada (and vice versa) will surely be a big attraction for them.

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VIA Rail Canada (VIA Rail) has signed a partnership with Hainan Airlines, the first to be concluded with a company based in China. As well, for the first time, this partnership will allow an airline company to sell VIA Rail tickets.

Hainan Airlines’ ticket offices and other travel agencies will be able to combine air and rail segments and issue a single electronic ticket with boarding passes for both the flight and train segments. Hainan Airlines passengers from China who are planning train travel in Canada will benefit from the convenience of booking all legs of their journey at once. And vice-versa for VIA Rail passengers who plan to travel to Toronto before flying on to China!

“We are excited about our first partnership with a Chinese airline and our very first partnership of this kind, offering a combined air-rail ticket,” declared Martin R. Landry, Chief Commercial Officer at VIA Rail. “China is the biggest-spending travel market in the world, and Chinese tourism to Canada has been growing over the past few years. Canadians continue to show great interest in visiting China as well, so this collaboration is very exciting.”

According to the Canadian Tourism Commission, visits from China increased 21% in 2010, 22.4% in 2011 and 15.5% in 2012.

– VIA Rail Canada