Eurostar is to cut 80 jobs following a downturn in passenger numbers and ticket revenue that the cross-Channel train company has ascribed in part to the EU referendum result.
The firm, whose main traffic comes from the high-speed London-Paris route, will also reduce the number of daily services on offer.
Although new carriages were recently introduced, passenger numbers had dropped 3% year on year, and tickets had been sold more cheaply to boost flagging demand. Revenues for the second quarter were 10% lower than in 2015, Eurostar announced in August.
In a recent interview with the French press, Nicolas Petrovic, the company’s chief executive, said the biggest cause of the drop in traffic was the terror attacks in Paris, although there had also been a brief downturn during the referendum campaign. Petrovic said American and Japanese travellers had also stayed away this summer.
A spokeswoman said: “We’re facing a challenging environment, and are looking at the size and shape of our business.”
She said the company “was committed to minimising the impact of these changes on staff” and would be looking to cut the jobs through voluntary redundancies. The job losses would affect on-board staff as well as office and depot staff, including in London.
A new international timetable will be released in December, with the current 21 daily services between the British and French capitals expected to be reduced. Overall capacity was expected to remain the same due to the larger trains being introduced.
Eurostar said it was still pressing ahead with introducing London-Amsterdam services next year.
Eurostar is now majority owned by the French state-owned rail company SNCF after the British government sold its share in 2015.
