We will be staying in Switzerland for two weeks with family. We are hoping to do several overnight and day trips from Basel. What kind of Swiss Travel pass would be best? Is the Travel pass good on local transportation in Basel as well? Does a day in a museum count as a travel day if we get a Flexi pass? Thanks!
Posted by
Green Bay
21150 posts
The STP is good for local transport in Basel and most other Swiss cities.
A free museum visit will count as a travel day (if you choose to use it) with a Flex Pass.
If you plan on several overnight and day trips, that would be 8 days in a month for 467 CHF, You can get a 15 day continuous pass for 513 CHF, so for just 10% more than than the 8 day Flex, you can get the whole 2 weeks covered.
Often, the biggest savings can be got with a 1 month Half Fare card for 120 CHF, then everything is half price, including local transport tickets and mountain lifts, but no free museum admissions. With the STP, it is generally only valid to inhabited villages, so mountain lifts above these points you just get a discount. Exceptions are the Schilthornbahn to the top, and Rigi Kulm summit. Those are fully covered. The Wengneralpbahn above Wengen, and the Jungfraujochbahn are only covered with a 25% discount.
The break even point for the Half Fare card is 240 CHF worth of full fare tickets. You can also buy Saver Day passes for a discount, but the prices go up as you approach your usage date. They can be bought up to 60 days in advance for the lowest prices.
Posted by
Atlanta, GA, United States
8 posts
I am going to CH for two weeks myself with family at the beginning of May. I'm going to end up getting the 30 day half-fare card for 120 CHF. I created a spreadsheet (similar to one you can get off MySwissAlps website) where I listed all the train connections between cities, excursions, boat rides, etc. Basically anything I would be doing that would cost transportation-wise. After adding up everything and taking in to account that the full swiss pass doesn't fully cover all excursions (Jungfraujoch, Pilatus, etc) it was a good 100-120 CHF cheaper for me to do the HFC versus the full Swiss Pass.
Now for some people like my dad that 100 CHF is worth it for convenience sake of not having to worry about buying tickets and just jumping on a train, but with the SBB mobile app I figure it will be easy enough and have even bought a couple already through it. Just matters how much you value that convenience vs about 100 bucks to do something else with.
My advice would be to download that spreadsheet or create your own with a few columns: Full price, Swiss Travel Pass, and Half-Fare Card. Make sure that you account for the prices you'll see on SBB.com as being half-fare already because almost all Swiss residents have a half fare card. I made the mistake thinking that was full price and after entering everything thought wow...the full swiss pass is a rip-off...but no I was mistaken. If you'll be doing a lot of museums make sure to include those and find out if the swiss pass will fully cover them or only a percentage and factor that in.
Short answer it will take a bit of leg work on your part to figure out the best option for you and I don't think anyone will have a one-size-fits-all answer for you.
I can't answer specifics on the museum part and if it counts as a day on the flexi pass, so will leave that to someone else.
Hope that points you in the right direction at least! Enjoy CH!!