The Passenger Services Group Innovation Workshop on “Connecting the Dots: Enabling Fluid Multimodal Passenger Experiences” took place on 16 September 2025, at the EY Wavespace in Rome, with the participation of representatives from Trenitalia, Italian State Railways (FS), FS Technology, Swiss Federal Railways (SBB), National Railways of France (SNCF), Trains of Portugal (CP), Swedish Railways (SJ), Hungarian State Railways (MAV), Spanish National Railway Network (RENFE), Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB), Entur, Dutch Railways (NS), and UIC.
Luca Mariorenzi, Chair of the UIC Passenger Experts Subgroup, opened the Innovation Workshop and welcomed the participants, who attend either in person or online.
Following a short round of introductions, Stefano Scarci (EY) delivered an introductory presentation on “What works, what doesn’t, and what’s next in enabling multimodal door-to-door experiences”. To drive sustainable mobility choices among travellers, it is essential to provide seamless and user-friendly experiences across different modes of transport, operators, and borders. However, achieving this has been challenging due for several reasons, including the need for viable business models, the presence of incompatible processes and systems, and widespread myths and misconceptions.
Nevertheless, new possibilities are emerging, such as the UIC Open Multi-Modal Toolkit, the collaboration between UIC and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) on air-rail interoperability, and AI-powered solutions. This progress will pave the way for a future where rail operators can work effectively together and with other modes of transport. Leveraging open, industry-wide digital solutions, the sector can deliver integrated, sustainable, and cross-border mobility options tailored to diverse customer segments.
Interactive surveys conducted with participants validated the importance of the challenges identified and revealed a general consensus on the potential of the proposed innovations in enhancing multi-modal mobility options.
Sebastien Touraine, Head of Airline Commercial Systems at IATA, presented an overview of the Modern Airline Retailing initiative. Airlines are on a transformative journey to adopt the new “100% offer and order model”. This shift requires a comprehensive overhaul of airline systems, including product management, offer management (which will enable dynamic pricing and bundling), and order management. The transition will phase out traditional elements such as e-tickets, electronic miscellaneous documents (EMDs), and passenger name records (PNRs), replacing them with digital orders. Ultimately, this transformation aims to greatly simplify the customer travel experience.
Adele Huber, SBB AI Lead, and Eva Krueger, SBB Co-Director of Customer Experience & Insights, gave a presentation on “Artificial Intelligence@SBB and Enhancing Customer Experience”. SBB has developed several Generative AI use cases focused on customer service, including a knowledge assistant for customer consultants, an email assistant, and a customer chatbot. The SBB Chat currently supports up to 1,500 daily interactions, with usage on the rise. Additionally, SBB has introduced the SBBgo app, which allows the customer journey to be analysed in the real world. Through the app, selected customers capture touchpoints via photo or text and provide ratings. The collected data is then analysed using AI tools that process comments in natural language and classify images.
In the breakout sessions, the participants had the opportunity to discuss and jointly work on ideas about three key topics:
1. How can railways contribute to better multimodal door-to-door mobility experiences for different customer segments?
2. How can railways leverage digital capabilities to innovate how they collaborate with other transport providers?
3. How can UIC facilitate international collaboration for the development of door-to-door mobility services?
Following the breakout sessions, several potential actions were identified, including promoting open digital standards to ensure interoperability among operators and across countries, creating segment-specific experiences, developing integrated solutions for seamless multimodal travel, improving data exchange processes, deploying AI-powered travel companions, and facilitating commercial agreements.
