Skift Take
Business travelers recently turned to Amtrak to avoid airport hassles on short-haul trips, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into a lucrative market for leisure travelers.
The country’s renewed thirst for rail and domestic travel has given Amtrak Vacations the confidence to significantly increase its capacity and product offerings for 2013 in the hopes that U.S. travelers are poised to rediscover the lost practice of leisure rail travel.
“Amtrak and Amtrak Vacations are really like the sleeping giant,” said Frank Marini, an escorted tour operator veteran. He said that travelers are increasingly opting to take the train over other modes of transportation and said Amtrak Vacations is hoping to carry that trend into the leisure travel market.
For 2013, Amtrak Vacations has more than doubled the number of departure dates for its escorted rail journeys and is offering triple the amount of product for its independent packages.
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Tags: amtrak, leisure travelers
Photo credit: The sun sets outside an Amtrak train passing through Texas. Russell Neches / Flickr.com