SNCB to stop selling international train tickets at nine main stations

From this month, anyone without a smartphone or access to a computer is going to find it harder to buy train tickets in Belgium for most non-Belgian destinations.

Belgium’s railway operator SNCB is no longer selling tickets for international train journeys requiring a reservation and those which go further than the country’s borders at nine stations including Brussels-Luxembourg, which once even possessed a special travel centre for that purpose.

SNCB justified its decision saying that it was the result of “the continuing decline in physical sales of international tickets at ticket offices”.

“On average, only one passenger a day bought a Eurostar or a TGV ticket at the Brussels-Luxembourg ticket office,” said SNCB spokesman Dimitri Temmerman.

Other stations that will stop issuing international train tickets are Arlon, Antwerp-Berchem, Eupen, Hasselt, Kortrijk, Mechelen, Ostend and Ottignies.

These stations will now concentrate on domestic train journeys and tickets to stations near the Belgian border, such as Roosendaal, Maastricht, Luxembourg, Aachen or Lille, with passengers also able to buy these tickets from the ticket machines. In December, Flex tickets for IC trains to the Netherlands will be available from these stations.

Passengers will still be able to buy tickets for international journeys beyond the frontier in person at Brussels-Central, Brussels-North and the main European hub, Brussels-Midi, at the special “travel stores” designated for this purpose.

Nine other stations in the country – Antwerp-Central, Bruges, Brussels Airport-Zaventem, Charleroi-Central, Ghent-Sint-Pieters, Leuven, Liège-Guillemins, Mons and Namur – will also still offer international ticket sales at these points of sale.

The SNCB said that these travel stores are “specialised in this type of product and can provide our customers with an optimum personalised advice for this range of tickets”.