Eurostar hit by 250,000 plunge in passengers

Despite its swanky new home at St Pancras and the promise of record times to Paris, Eurostar admitted today it carried 250,000 fewer passengers in the first three months of 2009, a fall of 11.5% back to 1.92 million.

Eurostar says that fall is down to the restrictions on access to the Channel Tunnel over the winter after a fire last September, holding back the number of services it has been running.

However the high-speed train operator also admitted it has been credit-crunched. It said there had been a 20% collapse in business class passenger traffic in the quarter as bankers and businessmen with declining amounts of work found fewer excuses to go to the continent.

Chief executive Richard Brown has long promised that Eurostar will hit a target of carrying 10 million passengers in 2010. That would need an increase of 10% over the two years from the 9.1 million carried in 2008.

However, if passenger numbers continue to drop this year, that target will become more difficult to attain especially as from next year rival train services from London to the Continent will be allowed through the tunnel for the first time.

It has long been speculated that German train operator Deutsche Bahn has been considering one such launch.

Eurostar said its revenues in the first quarter of 2009 fell 5.8% to £168 million.

The company, which has a labyrinthine corporate structure but is majority controlled by the French state railway SNCF, refuses to publish profit and loss figures though Brown recently admitted the UK end of the business remains loss-making because of the high charges levied to pay back the construction costs of the high-speed rail link.

Brown is insisting that leisure travellers are returning, with a 2.2% increase in tourists and short-breakers in recent weeks. "The downturn may be depressing business travel but it is having the opposite effect on the leisure market with more people wanting to get away from it all," he said.

The three-month decline in passenger numbers is in line with the 11% to 12% fall in traffic going through London's major airports, though Brown has long insisted Eurostar has gained at the expense of the airlines.

"Our research shows travellers want transparent pricing and good value fares when they're researching leisure breaks," he said.