It was the Christmas public relations disaster that was blamed on the wrong type of snow. Almost 2,000 people were trapped in the Channel Tunnel overnight when “fluffy” snow and freezing temperatures caused five Eurostar trains to break down.
Yet yesterday the company said that it had carried a record number of passengers through the tunnel last year, despite the seven-day period when trains were disrupted, while anecdotal evidence from the first two weeks of 2010 suggests that travellers are returning to Eurostar despite the pre-Christmas fiasco.
Sales in 2009 rose by 1.7 per cent, despite the effects of the recession, as the company carried 9.2 million passengers, up from 9.1 million in 2008. Leisure passengers have shown the most faith in Eurostar, with ticket sales up 15.6 per cent year-on-year. There were also signs that business travellers were returning to the service, although the company said that the economic environment had remained challenging throughout 2009.
The number of passengers travelling between London and Brussels increased by 6 per cent, while the number journeying between London and Paris rose by 1 per cent.
A spokesman for the company said: “The strength of the euro against the pound has helped us to attract tourists to London. There has never been a better time to spend euros in London and the Belgians, particularly, think that London is very trendy at the moment.”
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Meanwhile Eurotunnel, which operates the Channel Tunnel itself along with Shuttle services for cars and lorries, said that it hoped to win back all the hauliers that deserted its services for ferries as a result of a fire in the tunnel in September 2008. Revenue from haulage companies fell by 39 per cent in 2009 because many of its biggest customers, which sign up to annual contracts, felt unable to commit to Eurotunnel in November 2008.
The disruption from the fire continued until last February because Eurotunnel was able to use only five sixths of the tunnel, reducing the number of services that it could offer each day. The number of cars carried on Eurotunnel’s shuttles remained unchanged year-on-year, even though they were also affected by the disruption in the early part of the year.
Revenues for the full year slumped by 16 per cent to €571 million (£46 million), but the company noted that the performance in the fourth quarter had picked up sharply, with Shuttle revenue 10 per cent higher than the same quarter the previous year and railway revenue climbing 4 per cent.
Freight-train traffic was also hit hard by the economic crisis, although this service began to recover in the second half of the year. The number of these trains operated in 2009 fell by 12 per cent.
Separately, Eurotunnel said that it had finally received an €8 million payment from the British Government as reimbursement for money that the company spent preventing intrusions by illegal immigrants from the refuge centre in Sangatte, near Calais, which was closed in 2002.
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Eurotunnel sued both the French and British governments over the costs associated with Sangatte. A French court ruled two years ago that the two governments should have protected the Tunnel, which in effect was the frontier, and ordered them to pay the company €32 million.
However, it has taken two years for the British Government to pay its share of the money.