Eurostar explains reason Any Belgian Station ticket withdrawal with 'new solution' in the pipeline

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Tickets that allow Eurostar passengers to travel to any station in Belgium are being withdrawn.

The Any Belgian Station ticket will be taken off sale on March 31, with the last travel date being June 14.

The ticket has been discontinued at the request of SNCB, Belgium’s national rail operator.

Eurostar said the replacement will be a ‘point-to-point’ product. A statement said: “This new solution will allow passengers to seamlessly book both their Eurostar and SNCB trains in a single transaction, directly selecting their origin or destination in Belgium via Eurostar’s website. Passengers will then receive their SNCB ticket to connect in Brussels, Liège or Antwerp.”

Eurostar told RAIL the new offer “aims to offer clearer and more transparent travel options…while extending the scope as the product will also cover continental routes”

No launch date for the new ticket has been confirmed.

Ticketing expert Mark Smith has described the axing of the Any Belgian Station ticket as a “retrograde step”, saying it made sense for passengers travelling from London to just need one ticket to reach popular destinations such as Brugges and Liege.

He told RAIL the ticket also gave passengers legal rights such as Eurostar rebooking on a later train back to London should their initial service in Belgium be cancelled or delayed. Such rights will disappear with the withdrawal of the Any Belgian Station ticket.

Smith said that having single tickets is “what train companies should be doing”, adding: “I smile when train companies go on about multi-modal integration. What I would like to sort out is single-mode integration. One ticket for one mode.”

Between Eurostar’s inception in 1994 and 2010 passengers travelling with a London to Brussels ticket could use it across Belgium. The Any Belgian Ticket was introduced in 2010 when the Brussels ticket was limited to stations within the city.

Smith said the end of the Any Belgian Station ticket a few years after through ticketing from various UK cities to Eurostar destinations meant things were “going in the wrong direction”.