Eurostar even quicker with mobile tickets

Gates at the newly opened terminal at St Pancras International are already equipped with scanning devices and customers booking online will be able to print tickets at home through the service within months.

The mobile phone scheme, which will let passengers simply scan a barcode displayed on their phone's screen, is to begin trials by the middle of the year, a Eurostar spokeswoman said.

The move comes after Eurostar ticket sales increased by a fifth since the cross-Channel train service moved to St Pancras and started running at 186mph.

The introduction of the faster Londonto-Paris and London-to-Brussels services in the last six weeks of last year helped the train operator to carry a record number of passengers in 2007, up by 5.1 per cent to 8.26 million.

"We hope the new service will give people a lot more flexibility," said the Eurostar spokeswoman.

"Travellers can simply print out their ticket at home and get on the train more quickly. We are also planning to extend the service to mobile phones. We hope that overall it will mean we use a lot less paper, and get travellers on to the train quicker."

Last year, Chiltern Railways implemented a similar mobile phone ticketing system at London's Marylebone station. Communications network O2 has used mobile phone tickets at its Wireless music festival in Hyde Park.

Eurostar is also integrating its booking system with those of operators on the UK network, so national and international trips no longer need to be booked separately. Seven companies - Chiltern Railways, East Midlands Trains, First Capital Connect, Hull Trains, London Midland, National Express East Coast and Virgin Trains - are linked in following the installation of a new computer system supplied by Fujitsu.

Travellers from 68 towns and cities across the UK can order through-tickets to destinations in France, Belgium and Holland. The operator aims to add Germany, Switzerland and Austria to its network by 2009.

Jamel Chandoul, head of distribution for Eurostar, said: "With the new ticketing system many people can now book their entire journey from their local mainline station to continental Europe through one joined-up service."

All 25 members of the UK's Association of Train Operating Companies will be invited to participate in the scheme. A second wave of operators, including Great First Western and East Anglia, are expected to join by the end of the year.