My wife and I are spending 8 nights in Italy in January. We'll be taking three trains.
Rome > Venice.
Venice > Florence.
Florence > Rome.
A trenitalia 7-day 3-ride Comfort pass is 189 Euro.
Using this website's Italy train price estimate map, buying tickets point-to-point in 2nd class would be more expensive.
Are we a rare case where it does make sense to buy the pass? Or am I miscalculating something / missing information?
Thanks!
Welcome
Have you priced out tickets on both Trenitalia and ItaloTteno?
Those are the 2 official train companies (public and private-not resellers)
There are often good discounts if you purchase in advance
Rail passes are just never really beneficial in Italy
You still have to book your journey and reserve your seats
I’m not sure this website’s calculator is up to date -actually never seen it or used it
I suspect it uses Base Rate which is the highest price ticket
https://www.trenitalia.com/content/tcom/en.html
https://www.italotreno.com/en
Both run fast trains
Both have easy to use apps
January schedule won’t up til first week in December but you can use same day of week to check probable options and pricing
Hello baltimaher, and welcome to the forum!
It is entirely possible that a Trenitalia specific pass might work out for you and be a good deal. I think the passes everyone (including myself) discourages people about are the Eurail passes that are supposed to cover countries or even multiple countries that really don't work for modern Italian railroad systems.
When it comes to prices fast trains can vary wildly depending on how early you want to or are able to buy them.
Checking next month there are still 29e midweek Premium tickets from Rome to Venice and 40e Standard fare tickets freely available. Now discounted tickets come with change and refund restrictions but if you are willing to lock in the times you travel I think you could easily spend less than 189e a person for these fares.
However if you are planning on buying tickets the day of travel and will end up spending full fare then the pass could save you money. The base fares for these trains are more like 70e for Standard class and 77e for Premium. If the goal is not to necessarily save money but cap your maximum expenses for train travel the pass also accomplishes this goal.
For deal prices make sure you're checking with the company and not a third party site that might not be showing you all the possible fares: https://www.trenitalia.com/en.html
Also don't miss out on Italy's private train company .Italo that also runs these routes for other times, fares and saver fares that might interest you.
https://www.italotreno.com/en
Since I haven't used the passes I can't offer any insight into any potential pitfalls but it does sound like you could be on to a deal if it works for your schedule.
Have a great trip,
=Tod
To paraphrase Paul McCartney, listen to what the Man (in Seat 61) says
That pass is relatively new.
It is a good deal for seats in leisure business class.
You just have to remember to reserve the seat.
Most with a set itinerary like yours buy tickets well in advance to get the lowest price on those particular routes. And those advance tickets come with the seat reservation automatically already.
Thanks for the quick replies.
Super helpful. I'll dig in to these resources.
@ Jazz+Travels, when you say you still have to reserve a seat, what does that entail
Is it more money, or just like selecting a seat when I buy an airline ticket?
To be fair, when talking about "passes" the discussion is usually around Eurail passes, which break down to a hefty daily cost, plus, you need to pay for reservations.
The pass you are talking about is different, reservations seem to be included, but I can't speak to any other restrictions, this one is new to me.
I guess if it seems to work for you, then why not.
As for Eurail passes in Italy, the issue has been the costs for a ticket to get to point a to b (relatively short distances) are basically the same as the daily cost of a pass, plus you need to pay for a reservation. I think I figured the only way to make a Eurail pass pay was to do a crazy itinerary of Venice to Naples to Milan to Bari to Florence to... basically trekking from one end of the country to the other on each trip.
Hi baltimaher, Welcome to the forum. You can buy all your train tickets online now for all dates in January 2025 at www.TheTrainline.com I don’t know your specific dates of travel but found arbitrary dates in January with high-speed train tickets in second class from Rome to Florence for $40; Venice to Florence for $21 and Florence to Rome for $15. That would total $76. These are non-changeable and non-refundable tickets that likely will rise in price the closer it gets to January. All of these least expensive tix are for sale now on Italotreno’s website, www.Italotreno.com. where the prices may be even less than Trainline’s prices.
Have fun in Italy!
Many people will take advantage of discounted advance purchase tickets (with restrictions) to save money. Also, don’t use the Rick Steves website to estimate prices. Go to Trenitalia, plug in your trips, and see what the different tickets cost. I’d recommend reading the ”Man in Seat 61” website to understand the different types of fares.
https://www.seat61.com/train-travel-in-italy.htm#how-to-use-trenitalia.com
The pass may be worth it to you if flexibility is more important than cost savings. I plugged in your 3 journeys for random dates in November and I was able to find cheaper tickets with restrictions.
One more suggestion … Have you already bought your plane tickets? If I were doing this trip, I’d fly into one city and home from another (e.g., fly into Rome and home from Florence (or Pisa which is near Florence). It would save you the time of backtracking to Rome along with the cost of an extra train ride.
Jazz+Travels, when you say you still have to reserve a seat, what does that entail... is it more money, or just like selecting a seat when I buy an airline ticket?
It is like selecting a seat on an airline. You have to reserve a seat on the high speed direct trains from Rome to Venice, Venice to Florence and Florence to Rome; using this pass you can't just jump on any train. The seat reservation is free though. Say if you buy the pass now you still need to make a seat reservation for your desired route and time, between now and the day you want to depart. Most who are looking to buy a pass want freedom to take any train anytime but that only applies to short distance regional trains.
I did 90 days in Europe and paid about $900 for a pass, and I carefully logged how much the tickets would be without a pass, and I found it would have been $2500.
It seems to work out best if you move around a lot. Either bounce city to city daily which is my favorite way - or get a base city, then do day trips each day. For just a few trips, the pass won't work out well.
I think the most helpful way to think about it, is how much are you paying per day. In my case, it was about $10/day average. So I take a $20 train ride, I won that day. If I stay 3 days in one place, and take a $40 train, I won.
Wow, I would hope a pass would pencil out for a 90 day trip!
Another pass "trick" if you have X trips in Y days is to think twice before burning a day on a short cheap trip, instead just pay out of pocket.
The price for a 30 day pass is not that much more than for a 15 day pass. And then the 60 day pass is not much more than a 30 day pass. Then the 90 day pass is very small up price compared to 60 day. So yeah the 90 day pass is a deal. But for a 15 day trip, I would not buy a pass at all - unless you are doing an insane trip like Paris to Vienna to Rome to Sicily ... and being on the train every day for a long trip.
As I mentioned, having the unlimited pass alters your travel plans. It makes since to take a 5 hour train from Munich to Hamburg, then stay 5 days there, and make a day trip to Bremen one day, then the opposite way to Lubeck the next day, etc. The first ticket might be 100 eu, and then the day trips might be 2 x 10 eu, or whatever.
In fact, in Alsace, we just stayed in a smaller town between Colmar and Strasbourg, and just rode the train up and down N or S to other towns - sometimes even twice a day - just commuting on trains that run every 30 minutes or so.
Buying each ticket then you choose more carefully - and maybe take a bus for a day trip
And with a car, you can stay in small outlying areas to save a ton of money and see a lot more - albeit with the danger of traffic tickets, accidents, damage, or getting lost.
