Railteam, the European rail alliance has ditched plans for a common booking platform throughout all of its members due to increasing costs.

The team of highspeed rail operators had originally planed to develop a single ticket booking system to cover all seven members, including Eurostar, Thalys, SNCF and Deutsche Bahn.

The platform was due to be released this year however a spokesperson has said the project had been scrapped for the foreseeable future.

The spokesperson said that due to the complexity of the different distribution systems and linking them through, the solution would have cost many millions of pounds.

Given the harsh economic conditions that have especially hit the travel industry, the group of companies now have to examine at different options.

Rather than using a single booking platform, Eurostar believes that the strongest way forward is to ensure maximum access for connecting fares through different countries, through each of the individual company’s websites.

The new project will see the Railteam website providing linking travellers to the appropriate rail operator’s website in order to purchase individual tickets.

Railteam forecasts a 50 per cent rise in international train travel by 2020, with 68 million trips being made per year compared to the 45 million which were made in 2007.

Railteam was launched in July 2008 with a budget of  €30m to build a single platform and enable seamless travel between different rail networks.