Hello, I'm planning on purchasing train tickets via SBB from Zermatt to Bolzano (by way of Brig). Since this is an international trip, do the tickets purchased through the site transfer for the Italian trains? Or do we also need to book via Trenitalia? The time tables through SBB are much more favorable than what's showing up on Trenitalia, so I just want to be certain before we book.
We are planning to do the Swiss Travel Pass, too.
Thanks!
Should be the same trains on both apps. When are you travelling? It’s possible not all the trains are loaded yet.
When I recently traveled from Switzerland to Italy, I booked that one on Trenitalia as there was no way that I could see to pick specific seats for the seat reservations on SBB.
Since you’ll have the swiss travel pass, you will just need to purchase a ticket from the last stop in Switzerland to Bolzano.
It will be the same ticket (QR code) for the entire journey. In Switzerland, you will show your swiss travel pass.
We'll be leaving Zermatt on October 4. The trains on Trenitalia are all showing up for the evening of October 4, just not the morning, when we'd preferably like to leave early that morning to get to Bolzano in the afternoon.
It looks like it’s the routes with the EC trains (cross borders) that are not in Trenitalia yet. This is common. This happened to me for one of our routes too. I had to wait a bit before all the times were in the app. I think I bought one set of tickets in Jan. for our March trip.
I would check again in a few weeks. Or, if you’re like me, check every day. 😊
Some wisdon from the train expert, seat 61:
The golden rule is that if you don't see the complete train service
that you expect to see, don't assume that the missing trains have all
been mysteriously cancelled, just assume they haven't been loaded yet.
Wait a bit!
https://www.seat61.com/train-travel-in-italy.htm#how-to-buy-tickets
Thank you, Carrie!! It’s my first time booking tickets for European trains, so I appreciate the assist 😊
Are you trying to book Zermatt to Bolzano or just Domodossola to Bolzano? (if you have a Swiss Travel Pass you only need a ticket from Domodossola)
I had a look myself on both SBB and Trenitalia, and what I see is that Trenitalia makes you leave about half an hour earlier, and adds another change.
For example SBB has you leave at 8:13 and change in Brig., Whereas for the same arrival Trenitalia makes you leave at 7:37, and has you change in Visp and Brig. From Brig onwards both solutions are the same.
Trenitalia only recently has started to sell tickets for Swiss trains, but obviously their route planning algorithm is not optimal yet.
I would just book his with SBB. If you have the Swiss Travel Pass you can indicate "GA" as reduction, so you get the part till Domodossola for free.
SBB won't take some US credit cards if purchasing in advance in the States. We had to purchase tickets from Spiez to Milan through Trenitalia.
I was having trouble with cross-border trains on both websites yesterday afternoon. And then I noticed the alert on SBB regarding maintenance work on the website beginning very early morning on 10 July. Which it was, by the time I get fed up and turned to other things. That probably affected Trenitalia’s ability to show those trains as well.
