Omio to Buy Rail Europe, Consolidating Ground Transport

Omio Group, the booking platform that powers rail inside Uber’s app, has agreed to acquire Rail Europe, a ticketing platform founded more than 90 years ago, the company told Skift in an exclusive interview. 

The deal, which Omio plans to announce Thursday, would bring one of the sector’s largest ground-transport inventories under a single distributor.

The proposed acquisition consolidates a fragmented corner of travel. Flights and hotels have long been bookable through mature systems, but ground transport — rail, bus, ferry — remains a patchwork of operators and ticketing standards.

Buying Rail Europe gives Omio deeper operator ties and broader reach to unify more of that inventory. The purchase follows Omio’s earlier acquisitions of Rome2Rio and BusRadar, extending a strategy of assembling ground-transport inventory and distribution rather than relying on partnerships alone.

Together, the companies would sell more than 22 million train