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[L492]London To Paris Train

by Peter Halliday, Pet

The first trains ran in November 1994 and since then, Eurostar has established a dominant share of the market on the routes it serves. With the announcement that the Channel Tunnel Rail Link will open into London St Pancras station on November 14, 2007 the Eurostar service will enjoy "High Speed 1" status.

Eurostar claims the journey times match or beat air flights, thus making it an alternative to air travel for holidays in Europe. Fares include the price of the ticket and seat reservation. Meals are included for Business Premier and First Class fares. The service is also non-smoking!

Food in first class is better than that served in the economy seats of a plane and comes served separately with metal cutlery and complimentary half-bottles of wine.

There is also the convenience factor. If you live in London, instead of enduring a 40 minute trip to Heathrow, you can make it to Waterloo Station in just 10 minutes, thus shortening your trip.

If you get a seat in the first class (not premium first), not only does the leg-room double, but seemingly, so does the seat size.

From those who have travelled on Eurostar for weekend leisure visits to Europe, comes a trick for getting cheaper tickets. The idea is to book your tickets in reverse to take advantage of leisure fares coming in from the French side. So instead of booking London to Paris Monday to Friday, book Paris to London Friday to Monday. You will see a massive difference in price.

Some say it's cheaper to buy an air ticket, but if you add on airport taxes, the cost of getting out to one airport and then finding your way into the city from another airport, then all the drinky snacky things you'll buy on the way, you'd be hard pushed to do the trip for less than the Eurostar ticket. It will also take you much longer and be a much less pleasant journey.

A day trip from London to Paris, or vice-versa? No problem. By plane? It would be a nightmare! The Eurostar also caters very well for disabled people, so if you're disabled, there's another plus.

There are another few useful things worth knowing about Eurostar: they sell gift vouchers, which make nice presents. All their timetables are available on the internet, as are booking facilities and even details of how to book onward journeys if you want to transfer to another train to go elsewhere in France.

The downside at present, is that Eurostar's rail network is not very extensive, which means finding more train connections if you're going anywhere other than London, Paris and Brussels. But there are plans ahead for the service to extend across Europe. The day may come when you can catch a sleeper from London and wake up in Rome.

Even if you are only expanding to another city, you will need to find and rent offices. You will also need to find, interview and employ staff. With staff come all the associated costs of providing facilities for them, from restrooms to canteens. You will need to lease vehicles for your staff and cope with absences for illness and holidays.

Expanding to another country is ten times more expensive because you have to employ local agents to perform all the tasks above. You will need to open foreign bank accounts, pay local taxes and employ foreign accountants. Check out

Nowadays there is an alternative to having an office in every major country, costing 100K a year as a minimum. You can have a virtual office costing 1K a year in each country.

A virtual office package can include phone answering, signing for mail, a prestigious local postal address (with mail forwarding), cell phone forwarding, fax-to-email services and more.

The only way to have a presence in e.g. UK or Canada used to be to open expensive office premises in London, Ottawa or another major city. The premises required workers who needed paying. Rent, fuel and local taxes all added to the exorbitant cost of maintaining a presence in a country.

Now a virtual office gives you all the advantages of having a local presence, at only a tiny fraction of the cost.

You can also find a Virtual Assistant (VA) who is trained to respond to phone calls as though employed in your local office. This person can maintain your diary, answer emails and post, as though you were answering it yourself. Another massive savings is on employing a personal assistant in every country. Your VA answers the phone in a local accent, and gives you a really credible local presence that will help you increase your local sales.

Virtual Offices and Virtual Assistants make it possible for any business to maintain a presence in every single country or state they market to.

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Both Peter Halliday & Pearl Deloria are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Peter Halliday has sinced written about articles on various topics from Credit Cards, Options Trading and Wedding Speeches. For further information about the Eurostar Train, visit. Peter Halliday's top article generates over 40500 views. to your Favourites.

Pearl Deloria has sinced written about articles on various topics from Credit Cards, Management and Business Loans. Pearl Deloria has a background in management, including SMEs. For more management information check out or. Pearl Deloria's top article generates over 49500 views. to your Favourites.