It's a summer of news for Flixbus: the German bus transport group inaugurates the first connections in the United Kingdom and in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and reactivates in Germany, after the stop due to the health emergency, the FlixTrain train connection. However, the consequences of Covid are still visible on the Italian market, one of the busiest (before the crisis, there were over 10 million passengers a year). In our country, of the 500 destinations in the carnet at the end of 2019, only 280 were restored, just over half.
A unique case in Europe, as the Managing Director of FlixBus Italia, Andrea Incondi, does not fail to controversially underline: "While the network of connections is expanding elsewhere, in Italy we have to operate in small ranks because our sector has been abandoned. To date, we have resumed service in all the regions in which we were active to guarantee coverage of the territory as homogeneous as possible, but under these conditions we certainly cannot return to the capillarity of before, nor to operate with the same frequencies. We wonder if there is a strategy in our country to attract investments in the transport sector”.
Despite this complaint, the company is doing everything possible to at least cover the most popular tourist destinations, whether by the sea or in the mountains. In addition to the big cities, therefore, this summer Flixbus is guaranteeing the service in places such as Sanremo, Alassio, Noli e Varigotti in Western Liguria, Milano Marittima, Cesenatico, Rimini, Riccione e Catholic in Romagna and Otranto, Porto Cesareo, Santa Maria di Leuca e Gallipoli in Salento. In addition to Viareggio, Porto Recanati and Civitanova Marche, Alba Adriatica, Vasto and San Salvo, Sorrento and Agropoli, Termoli, Policoro, Sibari and Cirò Marina, Taormina. Or for those who prefer the mountains Aosta, Courmayeur, Trento, Rovereto, Bolzano, Merano, Bressanone and Lana.
In Europe, however, the business is expanding. The latest news as mentioned are the UK and the Baltic countries. The expansion in the United Kingdom, where Flixbus had landed in 2016 connecting London with some European cities, starts from the establishment of first links between the Capital and Birmingham, Bristol, Portsmouth and Guildford. Initially, around 200 journeys will be operated per week, with the model that has always been one of the distinctive features of the Flixbus offer in each of the countries where the operator is active: collaboration with local bus companies, which are entrusted the operational service in the sign of a union of forces and a sustainability of the business.
They also resume links between London and continental Europe, with the reactivation of routes to destinations such as Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam. And then there's the Baltic novelty: direct connections with the three capitals are already operational, Tallinn, Riga e Vilnius, and several other major destinations in the region, such as Kaunas, in Lithuania, o Parnu, a hotspot for the summer season in Estonia. Among the connections active as of now, also the international ones between Vilnius and Berlin and between Tallinn and Warsaw.
