Amtrak unveils new campaign to compete with air and road travel

Amtrak is hoping a new marketing campaign will get more people on board. The “Retrain Travel” ads will mostly appear online and around transit hubs. It is all part of Amtrak’s continued effort to try and sway people who prefer to drive or fly.

An exclusive report by the Wall Street Journal explored the challenges Amtrak has faced. Industry experts said the issue has been supply, including train production and parts management, which has affected operations.

“The biggest constraints on a lot of this is just capacity, pure and simple, and there’s not an easy marketing fix for that,” Sean Jeans-Gail, vice president of policy and government affairs of the Rail Passengers Association, said.

Jeans-Gail added the experience of traveling by train is too often impacted by delays and breakdowns. As a result, many see train travel as slow and unreliable.

To combat that, Amtrak’s chief commercial officer, Eliot Hamlisch, said the company has ramped up investment in the customer experience from its app to on-board hospitality. 

Amtrak has also been working to refurbish its stations and upgrade its trains. This is thanks to 2021’s $1 trillion infrastructure law that gave the railroad around $22 billion in direct aid.

According to numbers from the data-intelligence firm Morning Consult, 83% of Americans have heard of Amtrak. However, the percentage of those who say they are considering becoming a customer is much lower at 23%.

Since Amtrak started more than 50 years ago, it has been trying to convert frequent flyers. For example, a 1983 campaign featured the tagline “take off without leaving the ground.”

Those ads clashed with news of late arrival times. Flying also ultimately became cheaper and a habit for a lot of people.

Amtrak executives pointed to air travel complaints skyrocketing and traffic congestion problems as more reasons to travel by train.

Watch Amtrak’s 30 second commercial spot here.