The Sleeper Renaissance: How Luxury Trains Out-Class Business Class

A private sleeper cabin now costs less than a business-class fare — and unlike the jetway, it gives you the journey itself. This is the quiet revolution in how the discerning traveller crosses a continent: grounded, unhurried, and gloriously analogue.

There is a moment you never forget — the cabin lights dim, the dark outside grows darker than dark, and when you lift the blind a thousand stars pour across a landscape sliding past without a sound. It is not cinema. It is the plain truth of crossing a continent by rail at night, and it has become the most sought-after seat in travel.

For two decades the business-class cabin was the summit of civilised travel: the lie-flat seat, the lounge, the fast-tracked queue. But ask anyone who has done it often, and they will admit the truth — it is an efficient way to be nowhere. You are processed, elevated, and deposited, having seen nothing but cloud. The night train proposes the opposite bargain. You board in one city, sleep, and wake in another, and the hours you would have surrendered to an airport become the journey itself.

The business-class arithmetic, grounded

Here is the calculation that is quietly converting frequent flyers. A private sleeper cabin on ÖBB’s European Nightjet network runs from roughly €150 to €400 — a fraction of an €800–2,000 business-class fare for the same city pair. You arrive rested, in the centre of town rather than an hour from it, and you have spent the night moving instead of paying for a hotel that holds you still. The comfort rivals the lie-flat seat; the romance has no equivalent at altitude.

And above the sleeper sits an entirely separate tier — the grand luxury trains, which are less transport than destination. These do not compete with business class. They compete with the finest hotels on earth, and they happen to move.

The trains that are destinations in themselves

• Venice Simplon-Orient-Express — restored 1920s carriages from London and Paris to Venice; cabins from around €3,400, a moving Art-Deco grand hotel.
• Belmond Royal Scotsman — a country-house party on rails through the Scottish Highlands.
• Seven Stars Kyushu & Shiki-shima, Japan — the most coveted tickets in rail, where craftsmanship and kaiseki meet at the window.
• Maharajas’ Express, India — palatial suites across Rajasthan, the subcontinent unscrolling outside.
• Rocky Mountaineer, Canada — glass-domed daylight travel through the Canadian Rockies, hotels each night.

The panoramic day trains

Not every great train is a sleeper. Switzerland’s Glacier Express takes nearly eight hours to cross 291 bridges and 91 tunnels between Zermatt and St. Moritz, in glass-roofed carriages built around the view; its sister, the Bernina Express, climbs past 2,250 metres to drop into the palms of Italian Tirano. These are not about arriving. They are about the eight hours in between — the part flying erases entirely.

Watch the journey

Choosing your cabin

The difference between a memorable night and a sleepless one is what you book. A seat is cheapest and fine for a short hop. A couchette shares a compartment of four to six berths — sociable, affordable, and best met with an eye mask and earplugs. A private sleeper is the real luxury: your own room, proper beds, often a washbasin or en-suite, and breakfast brought to the door. It is here that “a hotel that moves” stops being a phrase and becomes the point.

The table where strangers become friends

Here is the secret no airline can sell you: the best encounters happen when you are not seeking them. In the dining car, dinner is taken with strangers who become friends over three hours — an artist, a professor, a journalist, all with stories worth the night. The new sleeper operators understand this. Their dining cars do not serve food so much as serve company, and their cabins are designed for intimacy rather than throughput.

How to book

Sleepers are sold directly by the operators — ÖBB for Nightjet, plus European Sleeper and the seasonal services that now stitch Europe’s cities back together by night. The panoramic day trains require a compulsory seat reservation on top of the ticket, so book early in summer. For multiple legs, an Interrail or Eurail pass can pay for itself, though reservations are separate. For the grand luxury trains, a specialist agent is worth the call.

Why grounded is the new first class

The status symbol is shifting. To fly business is to announce that your time is valuable; to take the night train is to announce that your time is your own. One buys speed and sees nothing; the other buys presence and sees everything — the weather changing, the altitude rising, the small mountain towns and lit platforms that are the real life of a country rather than its edited version.

When you come home, people will ask where you went, and you will struggle to answer. Because the journey was not a place. It was the being underway. That, it turns out, is the part worth paying for — and it never leaves the ground.

Quick view

• Sleeper from: ~€150–400 private cabin (vs ~€800–2,000 business-class air, same route).
• Grand luxury trains: from ~€3,400 (Venice Simplon-Orient-Express) — a destination, not transport.
• Best for: travellers who value presence over speed, and the journey over the arrival.
• Fares indicative — confirm current pricing at booking.