How To Advertise on The Eurostar
How To Advertise on The Eurostar
Key Takeaways:
Start with a strategic media plan.
Advertising on Eurostar is a media planning and buying exercise. Effective campaigns begin with clear objectives, defined audiences and a message tailored to the long-dwell, premium Eurostar environment.Use Eurostar formats intentionally.
Digital screens, the Connecting Bar, Print Walls and magazine placements all serve different roles along the passenger journey. A strong media plan chooses the right mix, at the right moments.Work with a media agency to navigate the process.
Buying Eurostar inventory requires coordination across multiple markets, formats and operators. An integrated agency like One Day ensures strategy, planning, buying and creative stay aligned.
Eurostar offers one of Europe’s most premium advertising environments. But placing your brand on Eurostar is not simply choosing a format. It is a media planning exercise that requires strategic thinking, coordination across borders and creative built to capture attention during long, relaxed journeys. This article explains how to advertise on Eurostar in a way that genuinely delivers results.
Why Eurostar Belongs in Your Media Plan
Eurostar is a unique media space because the audience is both international and high-value. Travellers usually fall into three groups: leisure, business and those visiting friends and family. Each group behaves differently, but they share one important characteristic: they have time. Passengers are seated, connected, comfortable and open to content. Unlike short commuter journeys, Eurostar trips allow for deeper engagement, making it an ideal environment for narrative-driven creative or premium positioning.
Leisure travellers are often looking for places to explore, shop, dine or discover. Business travellers use their journey to work, think or plan, making them receptive to B2B services, finance, productivity tools and premium brands. Those travelling to see friends and family make frequent trips and frequently spend on retail, gifting, food, entertainment and digital services. From a media perspective, it is an audience mix that is both attractive and strategically valuable.
Eurostar also aligns naturally with sustainability. Compared to flights, it is one of the lowest-carbon international transport options, which gives brands a positive environmental halo effect. For advertisers with ESG commitments or audiences who care about responsible travel, this is a particularly strong fit.
How To Advertise on Eurostar: A Strategic Approach
Because Eurostar is a premium media environment, the first step is a clear objective. Are you aiming to build awareness across multiple cities? Inspire tourists? Reach decision makers? Promote an event, attraction or high-value service? The objective defines which formats matter most.
Understanding the journey is equally important. Eurostar travellers move through several phases: Departures, lounge time, the boarding process, onboard dwell and Arrivals. Each moment has a different level of attention and different creative expectations. A good media plan maps these phases and assigns messages accordingly.
Even though passengers have time, your message should still be simple and memorable. Eurostar is an ideal space for storytelling, but that works best when built around a single clear idea supported by beautiful visuals and a strong brand identity.
Eurostar Media Formats and How To Use Them
Eurostar offers a mix of premium placements, each serving a different strategic role.
Digital Screens: Arrivals
Arrivals screens reach people as soon as they enter a new city. This is where travellers are deciding where to go, what to visit and what to do next. Tourism boards, restaurants, hotels and mobility services often perform well here because the timing matches their customer decision-making moments.
Digital Screens: Departures
Departure lounges offer significant dwell time. Travellers are relaxed, waiting, reading or planning their journey. These screens support longer-form messages, product storytelling and brand-building, making them well suited to premium brands, tech, finance, culture and entertainment.
Connecting Bar: Departures
This is one of the most impactful placements on the Eurostar network. Every departing passenger passes through this area, making it ideal for strong visual statements, brand launches or big bold creative. Think of it as the hero billboard of the Eurostar journey.
Print Wall: Arrivals
Print Walls offer sustained visibility in slow-movement zones where travellers often pause, check directions or gather belongings. They work well for retail, cultural events, tourism and fashion, or any brand seeking visual dominance at a key entry point.
Magazines in the Business Premier Lounge and at Home
Eurostar’s magazine placements reach a very premium audience. Business travellers consume these titles while waiting in lounges or through subscriptions at home. This is the format for deeper stories, luxury positioning, cultural content and B2B communications.
Best Practices for Eurostar Advertising
The most effective Eurostar campaigns use multiple touchpoints across the journey rather than relying on a single placement. A strategy that combines Departures impact, onboard dwell and Arrivals relevance typically produces the best recall.
Creative should reflect Eurostar’s long-dwell environment. You can afford more narrative, detail and emotion than in standard out-of-home. Travellers have time to absorb nuance, but it should still be anchored in one core message and strong branding.
Cross-border consistency matters as well. Eurostar links London, Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, so campaigns should be adapted for language and cultural context while retaining a unified brand identity. A pan-European message feels far stronger when expressed consistently across stations, lounges, magazines and onboard media.
Sustainability is another strategic lever. Because Eurostar is associated with low-carbon travel, brands with environmental commitments or values can lean into that context confidently. The setting itself reinforces the message without needing to force it.
Measuring the Impact of Eurostar Advertising
Even without complex digital tracking, Eurostar campaigns can be evaluated effectively. Brands typically see changes in branded search, direct site traffic, footfall (for retail or tourism), promo code use, customer surveys or B2B lead quality across target markets. Longer dwell times and premium audiences tend to produce strong brand lift results when measured before and after a campaign.
Conclusion
Advertising on Eurostar works best when treated not as a simple placement but as a media planning and buying exercise. A successful approach requires clear objectives, understanding the passenger journey, thoughtful format selection, market-specific adaptation and creative built for a premium travel environment.
This is where One Day, as an integrated media agency, adds real value. We build the strategy, recommend the format mix, negotiate with Eurostar media owners, manage cross-border planning, adapt the creative for each market and connect your Eurostar activity to digital, social and the rest of your media. The result is a coherent, measurable and high-impact campaign that uses Eurostar to its full potential.
Want to learn more about transport advertising? Check our blog articles on how to advertise on Trains and Trams.
