Train Hugger’s green vision for rail travel

Justin Schuster

Thank you for tuning in today to the Travel Is a Human Emotion podcast. My name is Justin Schuster and I’m the SVP of Marketing at Spotnana. And my guests today, I’m very excited to share our Edmund Caldecott, CEO of Train Hugger and Felix Tanzer, co-founder at Train Hugger. And my first question, Felix, is for you. Can you give us an overview of what Train Hugger does?

Felix Tanzer

Absolutely. So we are a specialist rail booking platform, obviously working off the Spotnana technology. And we really combine two key things. So firstly it is obviously a leading rail booking platform. So leading technology, we make it very easy for corporates to book, cancel, amend their own tickets. It’s essentially a self-service platform. 

So users can do pretty much everything they need to within the platform but we combine that with a very unique sustainability offering. Every time in this case a company buys a ticket we plant a tree via a partnership that we set up with the Royal Forestry Society. So the Royal Forestry Society is a charity based in the UK. They have 4,000 members across the country and Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland.

And basically every time a business purchases a ticket, we put money into a grant that we set up with the RFS. That is open to their 4,000 members. They essentially apply to the grant and say, we want to plant this mix of trees for this reason. And as long as it passes an audit, we essentially pay for the cost of the tree. So in short, one booking, one tree.

So we do that obviously through you guys on the corporate side. We also have a B2C platform as well. So we do that for leisure travelers as well. But that’s essentially what Train Hugger is all about is a great rail booking experience combined with a sustainability offering.

Justin Schuster

I had no idea that the scale of that army that’s there to plant trees was so large. That’s fantastic.

Felix Tanzer

It’s a significant membership for the Royal Forestry Society. But even, you know, on our side as well, you know, we’ve planted close to a million trees. So which it sounds like a lot, but it’s still a drop in the ocean as far as the targets, particularly in the UK are concerned. But it’s a good achievement for us.

Justin Schuster

What was the inspiration behind founding the company and how did you and Ed meet?

Ed Caldecott 

Felix and I met ages ago in the pub back at university and the inspiration also happened in the pub, but probably about 10 years after that. The inspiration was kind of back to front following on from Felix’s point about, you know, a million trees being a drop in the ocean or an acorn in the wood, whatever energy you want, there are just storm damage alone.

We lose in the UK about 10 million trees a year, mostly on the West Coast to storm. So our grant is the only one which replants restocks after storm damage. So we started thinking about tree planting and how we both wanted to plant a lot of trees and that was our ambition. And we were thinking about how to do it and what we could kind of connect to. So I’ve spent 15 years, I can’t believe it, but I’d spent about 15 years building software for UK rail companies and network rail around real-time information. 

So slightly different to what we do. So it’s some more specialist software, but I knew a lot about rail. And it seemed that there was a real opportunity here to combine a reward. So Felix and I were thinking about rewards, we didn’t want to kind of go down a Richard Branson 1990s reward idea. 

We felt like doing something, doing this sustainable thing, which really motivated us, would also chime well with consumers and with corporates. So the first place that we went was the Royal Forestry Society, and we put that grant together even before we had a business. And then we went through lots of different iterations before we finally happily found Spotnana.

And the technology of a Spotnana is an absolute key part of it. So that sort of cutting edge of great tech is essential because you know, the sustainable sandwich, which always tastes good, you know, sounds good, but quite often if the technology lets you down and it’s harder or it’s more expensive than, you know, customers, people, companies don’t want to do it. 

So when we met [Spotnana SVP of Content and Commercials] Bill [Brindle], on the top floor of Trainline, that was a real light bulb moment when suddenly Spotnana gave us the ability so essentially that there are three things that make Train Hugger unique for corporate customers There’s the Spotnana technology which we believe is the best out there. There’s the sustainability offering and we’ll come to the sustainability offering and why that’s unique but customers and corporates love it. And then there’s the account management which is, as I say, I’ve been in Rail for 15 years. Felix and I spend every day crunching customer data, talking to customers, but there’s loads of unique things around Rail from delay, repay to first-class upgrades, last-minute refunds. So there’s a whole bundle of stuff that we add on top of the Spotnana stuff.

Felix Tanzer

I think the other thing to say, just going back to that sort of genesis of the Spotnana relationship was we actually launched Train Hugger originally as a B2C product. We knew that we always wanted to do B2B, B2C seemed kind of a quicker route to market. And I think maybe the technology as far as kind of third-party partnerships seemed to be easier to access.

So we didn’t really know how to get into B2B, even though we knew we wanted to do it. And I think other than knowing that you guys had good technology, it was also a sort of mindset thing, which I think you wanted to, well, first of all, you’re ambitious and fairly new, which chimed with us. But I think also it was clear from that first conversation with Bill, he wanted to get into the UK market and we’re a helpful partner to do that with. But I think secondly, as with all technology, we knew that it wasn’t going to be perfect straight off the bat. We were reassured and actually then also found during the launch process that you guys responded really quickly. 

So one of the great experiences of working with you is that wherever there’s been a problem and there are always going to be problems with technology, they’ve been fixed really quickly. And I think it’s always been a very kind of mutual thing. 

If we can turn it around really quickly, then actually that almost strengthens the account management and the kind of relationship side of things that Ed was alluding to.

Ed Caldecott

And then that mindset, which is not something that you would ever talk about as inspiration, but when it’s a cold February day and everyone’s feeling miserable, that mindset is really important in a company. We at Train Hugger really share Spotnana’s mindset. We are trying to stir up, we’re both trying to stir up an old, sometimes tired industry in different ways. 

From a sustainability perspective, the way that sustainability is spoken about is unbelievably dry and really boring. So people will talk about carbon and measuring carbon and KPI and all of this sort of stuff, which is great, those boxes need to be ticked. But we don’t talk about that. So when we talk about tree planting, we will talk about planting ash trees because we are trying to create a disease resistant variety, and endorse it near where your business is located. So there’s a type of tree that you know about, there’s a disease that you’ve heard about in a region which is right on your doorstep. And then if possible, we’ll get you out, get the team out and you can plant some trees in that forest and make it your woodland.

So rather than sort of a bit, essentially what we’re trying to do is avoid greenwashing at all costs. What Spotnana are trying to do is avoid the customer, you know, having a 15 pound booking fee because you’ve amended a train fare and it’s taking you 10 seconds to do that. So I think we’re both trying to make things, you know, more sensible, more common sensical.

Justin Schuster

That’s really wonderful. didn’t realize that when you do the tree planting, it’s not as though the customer has to take it on faith that a tree was planted somewhere. They actually get to see in some cases that planted right in their local neighborhood.

Ed Caldecott

Yes, so they might even plant it with their own two hands, or they might, at the very least, we will tell them that it was a rowan in Hampshire or a chestnut in Caernarfonshire, whatever it is. So we will tell them what and where and why they can, there’s loads of other detail about tree planting that we can go on about for ages. And that’s kind of important too, because often people don’t hear about the detail and the detail is kind of exciting sometimes.

Felix Tanzer

I think we’ll say, yeah, looking at it both from a consumer and a business point of view. So I think from a consumer point of view, everything that Ed has said, you’re not going to buy into something if you just say, great, I’ve bought a ticket and somewhere in the world, a tree has been planted. I think that, you know, if you can demonstrate that it’s local and that’s one of the key things that we really wanted to kind of hone in on when we started the business was like, make this local, make it relatable. That’s great.

But I think also for businesses as well, our pitch when we’re speaking to a business, it’s never one thing. I think they need the technology, they want the commercials to be there, and then the sustainability piece almost wraps the whole thing together. But they want to be able to shout about what they’re doing.

If it’s a vague proposition as to where these trees are being planted or it’s going to be a tree in Madagascar, we can’t quite tell you where, it doesn’t really wash with a business either. So the fact that A, they can give the specifics about what the project is, but then they can also engage their staff. So their staff is saying, okay, we use Train Hugger every week to book our train tickets, but now at the end of the year we get to go and actually plant some trees. The whole thing kind of pulls together. 

It’s great for the business, but also, yeah, just looking at it from a commercial point of view, we want to keep our customers. And I think, you know, having great tech, great pricing, and then having that kind of level of engagement, you hope all those things kind of play together to make sure that we keep our customers for years and years to come.

Justin Schuster

Are people mostly finding you because they are passionate about sustainability and they discover you through that lens or are they mostly looking for a rail partner and then they find that you have this wonderful sustainability angle and that’s what puts you over the top?

Ed Caldecott 

So it depends on the industry. It depends on how the company is structured and then the relationships between procurement and sustainability. But as Felix said, so essentially pricing, technology, account management and sustainability. We’ve got four key pillars of our business. And then when we go in and talk to someone, we can very quickly, within two minutes, find out which thing they want to talk about. 

And from a sustainability side, we have spoken to companies who just this, you know, the idea of planting the right tree in the right place around the corner from them, they couldn’t care less. They just want to know how much carbon they’re generating and get their scope for emissions.

Felix Tanzer

We’re still in the grand scheme of things pretty new to the world. And I think that how people think about us has kind of evolved as well, even in the last few years, I think, you know, initially, it would be kind of outreach on our part. But then, first of all, we’ve started going to more events, you know, we’ve seen you guys at trade fairs, and we’ve been to some of the Institute of Travel Management things so we’re building a network and like all industries, the travel industry is actually in the end quite small. 

You know, everyone knows everyone. And so we’re, guess, trying to build a name for ourselves. I guess word gets out a little bit that way. I think the other thing that’s been really nice in the last six-to-nine months is actually we’re getting more referrals. So we’re having travel managers who are moving to new companies and then suggesting us to their new procurement team, or we’re just getting people because everyone talks to each other, who come to us directly and they say, we heard about you through another company. Let’s have a call. So I think the way that we’re finding new customers is definitely evolving as we become more established.

Justin Schuster

And related to that, I think I understand that you’re starting to work with some TMCs or you’re exploring relationships with TMCs. How is that looking and why are TMCs interested in partnering with you?

Felix Tanzer

So it’s very early days on that one. We have started doing some work with TMCs. I think the proposal to them, the proposition to them, still hangs around the same sort of four pillars that Ed mentioned, just in a slightly different way. So we’re saying to them, you want to be able to offer your customers really good technology. We can do that via the platform.

You want to be able to offer your customers potentially a really nice sustainability hook. Obviously we can do that as well. Because the tech is really good, we make the TMC lives easier because they’re not going to be called up to do as much. So there’s less work for the TMC. I think the problem with the TMC route that we’re finding is it’s just quite slow. 

Everything that I mentioned in terms of, you know, mutual mindset with Spotnana is around speed and ambition and moving quickly. And I think that what we found with the TMC world is just, it’s a much slower beast.

Ed Caldecott

But equally a lot of the time that we’ve spent getting European accreditation is what’s really attractive to TMCs. So it’s taken us about together with Spotnana almost two years to get SNCF and you have to put down the deposits, you have to get that all cleared, you have to get all the licenses. A lot of TMCs don’t have European travel. So then we can provide the European travel piece.

Justin Schuster

I’m going to shift gears for a little bit. And Edmund asked you a question. I saw on your LinkedIn profile that you were the founder of One Night Records. And I was able to find a site that described what that was. And unfortunately, the story that One Night was forced to close during the pandemic. So I wanted to ask you, what was your vision for One Night Records? And how did your experience shape you as an entrepreneur? And does it have any connection to what you’re doing now?

Ed Caldecott

One Night Records breaks my heart. It was the funnest, and probably worst business that I’ve been involved in. The basic concept was, so it was a vast railway tunnel. think about probably eight tunnels and each tunnel is for size maybe of a tennis court. So it’s big.

It’s in London Bridge and you essentially move through as each tunnel has got live music in it and you start off in the middle of Spanish influenza and it’s ragtime. So you start there with sort of Scott Joplin, someone on the piano. It’s quite eerie.

And then you basically move through American music. There’s a train, there’s brass bands, we’re into the 40s, smoky saloon, then bluegrass, ending up in Chicago with disco via the 60s and sort of neon signs and sort of rock bands. So it was, our capacity was about a thousand, which is obviously horribly impacted by COVID.

And partly, you know, a very money hungry business. So our costs per week were about a hundred grand. And by the time we went bust, we were turning about 90 grand a week. So, you know, we were not losing much money, but it was impossible to raise any money for live business at that point. 

In terms of what I learned, I’ve started up five other businesses which are still all going but they are much smaller in terms of payroll. So that’s the first thing. And the second thing is just having a real grip on your business model from day one. So really quite boring lessons because it won London’s best music venue the week it closed. You know, it’s heartbreaking.

It was a sort of brilliant venue and a terrible business. Because even if we’d stayed open, we still never would have made any money. And it was all run on a shoestring. But it was really cool.

Justin Schuster

Well, I’m so sorry I missed it. I would have loved that experience. And one of the things that I also noticed about Train Hugger is that you have a number of partnerships with sports teams and music venues, and you did a partnership with Massive Attack for a concert. Can you say a little bit more about how you’re thinking about that on the leisure side of partnering with those types of organizations?

Felix Tanzer

A lot of the partnerships kind of evolved as we were, as with all businesses, kind of working out how we build Train Hugger. And I think obviously they started, as I mentioned, we started on the consumer side first. 

You’ve got a lot of sports organizations who will always partner with you if you put a massive great brown envelope on the desk. We did a partnership with Crystal Palace and then we got a phone call from every single football club in the Premier League and it became clear that all of them just wanted a nice wad of cash, which is fine.

Then what we found though, was that there are lots of potential partnerships with organizations who want to do it frankly because they think it’s the right thing to do and they hadn’t even really thought about a training partnership. And we’ve actually found more and more of those. So that was partly a combination because we didn’t really want to pay for sponsorship deals. Didn’t really work for us.

The Massive Attack partnership really came off the back of a piece that we had in The Guardian where one of their managers just got in touch and said that these guys really care about not just sustainable travel, they wanted to put on the most sustainable event ever in the music industry.

And so if you look at the, the, the event we did with them, we were doing the rail, but they partnered with Ecotricity who set up permanent electric feeds in Bristol where they did the event. Because they basically said, historically, every time there’s a gig there, they turn up with 10 generators, pump a load of diesel, and then they will drive away again. So they put in permanent feeds. They partnered with Volta trucks who brought all of the equipment on electric trucks. You know, the whole thing was kind of one thing.

So that’s why we partnered with Massive Attack, but we also partner with the likes of Goodwood. And so they do motor racing, horse racing, and they have lots of other events throughout the year. And again, the partnership there is, they want to show a commitment to sustainable travel, sending people to book their tickets via Train Hugger is a great way to do that. And in their case, it’s actually really nice because they have thousands of acres of land.

So we’re exploring ways that we can plant the trees on their estates. So it’s a kind of, you know, one whole ecosystem. And we’ve got other partnerships we’re working with as well. So I think, yeah, that’s a lot of this is just a question of focus.

As Ed has said, I think at this stage of Train Hugger, we’re trying to keep the overheads as low as we can. So realistically, we just have to choose what we focus on. I think if we had someone who was doing full time on partnerships, we’d probably be doing more of them. But they’re a nice way of growing the brand. Every time there’s a big event at Goodwood, you see the base level of Train Hugger grow. And actually in some ways the B2B platform is a great boost for B2C as well, because as, as, you know, the business side grows, it drives awareness. And then we see slowly the B2C side kind of grows organically off the back of that as well.

Justin Schuster 

Well, just as you’re talking about being really thoughtful about the ways in which you grow and expand, what is next for Train Hugger? What are the big growth opportunities you’re thinking about?

Ed Caldecott

Well, it’s hard to give a sort of sensible logical step by step answer, because that in my experience was the sort of answer you give before reality has steamrolled you. So what’s happened in the last few months is that we are experiencing this step growth where suddenly we double and then we are sort of steady for a couple of months and then we double again. So we’re just going through this doubling again.

And when that happens, you know, we might have to review how many account managers we have, how fast we’re growing, are we growing too fast? So a kind of a breath is what’s probably going to happen next. Because it’s really exciting. We’re getting contacted a lot. As Felix says, we’ve just hit a million trees.

Is that a fair answer, Felix? Is there anything else you’d like to add to our plans?

Felix Tanzer

Yeah, I think your point around reality hitting the sort of forecast. I think the one thing that we’ve really noticed is that the sales cycle can be quite slow. So it favors you in the long run because the reason it’s slow is that if you’re a construction company, your rail program is not necessarily always going to be the first thing that you’re thinking about as the procurement director.

So it’s very easy for it to kind of drop from the top to the middle of the pile and you get closer to the top again and then you drop a bit and say, we found that often we can be talking to someone for six months before they’ll actually sign up. Now the good news is, that the inertia that was the kind of difficulty in getting it over the line in the first place is then a massive friend of ours once we’re in, because no one wants to bother changing everything afterwards. And for all the reasons that we’ve just said, we hope they don’t have a reason to. 

So I think our challenge is how we speed up that sales cycle. But if we can’t, then I think we just recognize from our side that A, we just need to keep the pipe filling up because it takes quite a while for people to get through it. And B, just be realistic about the fact that the way our sales seem to work is quite seasonal. So we are basically very heavily connected, it would seem, to the school schedule. So it goes quiet in the summer. We have a big push now before Christmas. It goes quiet over Christmas, quiet Easter. So I think our strategy is just to push really hard in these periods.

Ed Caldecott

For the moment, it is UK focus, we by the end of September have full European coverage and with a platform which supports multiple European languages. then going hunting for European businesses suddenly becomes an option, but we don’t think we will do that immediately. We’ll focus on UK businesses traveling in Europe for a bit longer.

Justin Schuster 

And how will you convert the tree side of things once you start expanding into Europe.

Ed Caldecott

Yeah, good question. So we’re already looking at that because that takes forever to organize.

Felix Tanzer

I think to add to the point, whilst we’re doing UK businesses traveling in Europe, we’re okay to carry on planting in the UK, but I think as soon as we start dealing with a French company, they might not want the trees being planted in Hampshire. So yeah, we’re looking.

Ed Caldecott 

And that whole point that we were talking about in terms of people feeling like they’ve planted a tree they know in a region they live in. Yeah. So if we’re going to do business in Germany, we need to be planting trees in the Black Forest. So we’re starting that process. We’ve got some projects in Brittany that we’re looking at. But it took us about three or four years to get the RFS sort of running. So it will take time.

Justin Schuster

Well, since this is the Travel Is a Human Emotion podcast, my last question I always ask is, when you reflect on the connection between travel and human emotions, what’s present for you?

Felix Tanzer

I think that travel has the ability to promote two emotions very quickly. So think the first is if you’ve got a young family and you’re traveling on your own on a train. Let’s take that as an example.

There can be an absolute joy in sitting down and just having three hours ahead of you, if you know uninterrupted time to yourself. And I mean, that can extend to being on a plane and all the rest of it. But the reason I say this, I think it can kind of conjure up another emotion very quickly is as soon as something starts to go wrong when you’re traveling, it’s like a visceral emotion that you kind of can’t control. You get to the station and then it’s like, your train just says delayed and it doesn’t say delayed for how long.

Yeah. So I think for me that there’s obviously a great joy in traveling and all the sort of advertising associated with traveling is selling you the dream of travel. I think from a practical point of view, and if we’re looking at, you know, Train Hugger and Spotnana, I think accepting that travel will always not go, won’t always go smoothly. But if you can kind of provide at least the information or the system to make it as easy as possible for people. you can control the negative emotions as well as obviously providing for a happier travel experience.

Ed Caldecott 

Yeah, I think that’s the really interesting growth opportunity for Spotnana. So what my other company, Woosh, does is we do personalized real-time information for UK rail operators. And the worst thing that you can possibly do to someone who is traveling is just tell them there’s going to be a delay, but you’re not going to tell them why there’s going to be a delay or how long they are going to be delayed. 

And then their human lizard brain immediately thinks, well, you know, this means I’m to be here for days. Like, like this is the end of the world. so trying to manage and, and the problem is we’re all so used to just grabbing information, and information being available at our fingertips.

So I think that sort of that fear factor, which is always there when traveling, if we can manage that, and even better be the single source of truth, which is what Trainline does so well from a consumer perspective. And that’s why they’re used is because essentially something goes wrong or something might go wrong.

Justin Schuster 

Thank you both. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you and thank you again for being guests on the Travel as a Human Emotion podcast.

Ed Caldecott

Thank you so much, Justin.

Felix Tanzer

Thanks Justin.