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Review: GoEuro – A Travel Booking Site

GoEuro is a travel booking site with a difference.  It is a travel search website that allows you to compare and combine air, rail and coach transport across Europe. Launched in 2013 it has steadily been growing and now operates in 11 countries. We are planning a visit to Crete soon, so we decided to explore this search engine.  I always search in a private or incognito window, so that search engine cookies are unlikely to remember me. This can help in securing a better deal, especially if you are like me and are continually looking at different options and days! Please note: Some trains and buses can only be booked 90 days in advance.

 

 

You can use the filters on GoEuro to plan trips that are specific to your personal preferences regarding a number of different factors: how you want to travel, your budget, departure and arrival time, duration and even the number of changes. Alternatively, for your convenience, you can sort the search results by cheapest, fastest, departure time and arrival time.

First impressions

GoEuro has a clean layout and is very user-friendly. The home page clearly explains that it can find you the best way to travel by filtering options for trains, buses and flights all in one search. You can search from city, town or village, and add the airport code directly. There is also the option of searching for accommodation with Booking.com. The homepage shows that is approved for certain companies including National Express, Virgin Trains, DB, EasyJet, Euroline, SNCF etc. In total  340 rail and bus companies  are covered in Europe! To save some time, it even has some of the most popular destinations listed, so you can quickly find the results with 1 click. If you need to change the number of passengers, or other variables this is simply done. Here is an example for Edinburgh to London.

A nice little touch is the information regarding the demographics and expense details of the destination. I nearly missed this as it was below the fold, but worth a scroll down if you haven’t been to the destination before. Even further below are a few more details with exact times, and the fastest way, best fares etc.

 

Choosing how to get there

Researching a journey is a simple process. Enter your ‘From’ city, town or village and destination. For an example to research London to Paris, you simply find the name and all the options; Train, Flight and Bus will be displayed -including all the airports and main train terminals. You just click the option on the left to tweak your results and/or select the smartest, cheapest, fastest time in the tab menu above.

 

 

Although flying is clearly the fastest option, and comes up cheaper, be mindful that at this stage the cost doesn’t take into account the extra charges for baggage that the low-cost carriers have as an extra. (The above example is for a family of 4 with 2 adults and 2 children) You will also need to consider is arrival at the airport or train station more convenient? This is similar to all booking sites.

When I was researching for Crete, clearly my only option was by air, but I was unsure which UK airport to fly out of, as several are of similar distance. Unfortunately, you can’t select UK or multiple airports so you will need to search each one individually. Also for a very few destinations  (like Crete, Rome and Sicily) you currently need to search via the airport name, Heraklion in my case. This is being looked at by the developers who will be making changes to reflect this.

After researching the flight, the booking engine gives you all the flight options available and then it is simply a matter of clicking your preferred flight option. Then you will be taken through to your chosen flight provider. This could be the airline, Expedia or similar companies. Once you are through to that stage, you can simply add the necessary tweaks to your booking; including baggage, insurance etc.

 

Other features

I nearly missed this because it is in the footer, but GoEuro also can provide short cuts to features such as cheap flights, city breaks, a Europe Trip Planner, Ski Holidays, Eurostar and so much more. The Ski Resorts page lists the top 100 in Europe and even ranks them by price, quality, access, apres ski and the family friendliness!

 

 

The cheap flights page has some great tips for securing great deals on flights (I have some of my own in this separate post). A further extra are the examples of cheap routes so if you are stuck for inspiration or are on a tight budget you instantly know where to explore.

Verdict

GoEuro is a really easy platform to use and ideal for those that are especially travelling within the UK or within mainland Europe and are unsure of which mode of transport to take. For backpacking or a multiple city break this can really make the research quicker and simpler. Notably this has benefits for flying phobic passengers as GoEuro provides a flexible resource to travel around Europe.

The added bonus of a flight search engine, even if you know a bus or train travel is not an option  – is a convenient tool and similar to SkyScanner. As mentioned above, a couple of tweaks need to be made to a very few destinations – otherwise some people might not realise that they are available. It could also be beneficial in the future to choose destinations via a map option too (hint hint GoEuro). This would be so handy for those who are not exactly sure where places are.  I would also like to see an option for searching by countries and then the cities/ stations/airports popup to scroll through.

I love the bonus features but think these should be highlighted, rather than in the footer, as like me you might miss them! There are some real gems in there! However, a refreshing advantage is the ease of contact. The customer service page is very simple to find and has contact numbers for several countries, an email plus social media contact details.

Further information

GoEuro also has a rail planner mobile app for Android and iOs

 

This post is in collaboration with GoEuro. As always my opinions are my own.

 

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