Federal’s 50 Year Anniversary
Here’s to another 50 years

Federal Group, entering its 50th year of business, made its mark in Taiwan by sparking the trend of traveling around Europe by train, all with a small agency and limited resources. On top of that, Federal had the honor of winning RailEurope’s Most Creative Marketing Campaign Award in 2018.

New Opportunities

In 2016, Federal foresaw that Switzerland’s hot travel market was going to lead to problems, so in September of that year, Federal and Switzerland Tourist Bureau partnered to create a hiking-themed Fam Trip. To gain momentum with our product, we expanded beyond our usual travel industry partners and insisted that a wide variety of people and organizations be invited, including hiking clubs, travel agencies, KOC/KOLs, media, etc.

In the end of 2017, we noticed that Spain’s tourist numbers were growing year-on-year, so in the beginning of 2018, we proactively made a proposal to Spain’s Travel Bureau to partner and create a product together. As a result, we created the “Agent Tour”, a tour specifically designed for travel agents to experience Spain in the convenience and comfort of train travel.

As we saw new opportunities, we would immediately pounce and create new and exciting itineraries and travel packages. We created 10 new travel products in the first half of 2018 alone. Even with such a small team, we were impressed by our industry peers with our rate of innovation and creation.

Expanding beyond our comfort zone

After working with the outdoor sports market, Federal has started to collaborate with partners in hiking, alpine and cycling tours, promoting new and exciting products for our customers. As these partnerships have developed, Federal has stepped back to the second line, planning products with cross-industry partners

Supporting agencies with more sales and resources

If it weren’t for the support of our travel agency partners, our train travel business would not be where it is today. Some of our most important work is deeply understanding the products, needs and requirements of our travel partners.

GoByTrain provides FOC and capital to long-time Rail Pass partners to support the development of new travel gifts and products. During conference meetings, GoByTrain will share market trend and cross selling best practices practices, and of course discuss potential Fam Trip sponsorships!

A marketing-focused organization that considers every step of the customer’s decision journey

GoByTrain utilizes a web structure - horizontally, our departments and teams are well connected, and vertically, we can make rapid decisions. Our Marketing team are also responsible for the different product accounts. Strategy doesn’t just fall out of the sky - everything we do is driven by data and numbers. Our Marketing and Operations teams dictate the annual revenue goal together. The Marketing team is responsible for finding potential business and growth opportunities in the large market expanse, and the Operations team supports with feedback and market data compilation.

Through an honest process of continuous improvement and self-reflection, we hit a historical milestone in 2018 by doubling sales in the Europe train market over a 5-year period.

In-House Marketing

We strongly believe that the people who deeply understand the products know how to sell them best, so Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Facebook marketing, Instagram marketing, LINE marketing, workshops, lectures are all done in-house at GoByTrain. In-house marketing ensures that our ad ROI, marketing copy and graphics are all up to standard at all times.

Our principles of taking risks, trying new things and honestly reflecting on our experiments has become one of our key competitive advantages - several of our large customers, such as Qatar Airways, Scoot , Air Tahiti Nui, NokScoot Airlines and South Africa Airways, have all opted to use our in-house marketing services in Taiwan rather than outsourcing to advertising agencies.

KOL-driven ticket purchases increased 21x in 2017

Collaborating with KOLs of all kinds (bloggers, fashion Instagrammers, KOCs, professionals, artists and Youtubers) became one of our core strategies in 2017, especially considering our focus on FIT.

After years of trial and error, these KOL partners played a key role in dramatically boosting our sales - our KOL-driven sales increased by 21 times year-on-year.