photo: TransasiaTrain/Luxury tourist train to Cappadocia to appear in Turkey
The start of the first flight of the "five-star" tourist train Cappadocia Express in Turkey is scheduled for February 2022.
In September, it became known that the launch of Turkey's largest private rail tourism project, the Cappadocia Express tourist train, announced in April 2021, is now slated for February 2022. Previously, it was assumed that the luxury train to Run to Cappadocia will go at the end of 2021.
The project of the first private luxury tourist train is being implemented jointly by the Japanese tourism group HIS Travel and the Turkish company Sun Group, which deals with rail infrastructure. HIS Travel is already working with € 100 million hotel projects in Cappadocia and Pamukkale. The joint venture of the two companies was licensed as a railway operator in December 2020, acquiring locomotives for future trains.
It is planned that at the first stage 40 million euros will be invested in the Cappadocia Express project. The target audience is tourists who are ready to spend at least 5 thousand euros on a trip.
The Cappadocia Express train itself will meet the standards of a luxury 5-star hotel and, according to the operator, will be focused on the experience of premium trains such as The Pride of Africa (South Africa), Rocky Mountaineer (Canada), Trans-Siberian Express trains (Imperial Russia and Berkut), Gan (Australia), etc.
As mentioned above, the cost of a ticket for Cappadocia Express can reach several thousand euros, depending on the type of accommodation, program and additional. Services. Twelve carriages of the train will have double compartments with full beds, shower and toilet, and two more cars will have luxury restaurants.
It is planned to launch the routes Ankara-Cappadocia and Istanbul-Cappadocia. Both trains will run daily and arrive at Kayseri. The trains will include two locomotives and 14 carriages. In total, each tourist train will accommodate 294 people. During the year, the operator company intends to transport at least 200 thousand tourists to Cappadocia.
According to the latest data, one of the elite trains should leave in February 2022 - with a departure from Istanbul. It is not yet known whether flights from Ankara will start at the same time.
It is known, however, that the HIS Travel and Sun Group project is not going to stop only in Cappadocia: luxury tourist trains should go from Istanbul and / or Ankara to Eastern Anatolia, Mesopotamia, the Black Sea region (Karadeniz) and the Aegean coast within 7-8 years ...
In April 2021, the project proponents announced that the completed railway tourism project would create an entirely new infrastructure sector in the Turkish economy, generating at least € 1 billion in multiplier effects.