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Swiss Travel Pass Questions

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My wife, my adult son, and I are traveling to Switzerland in mid-August for 15 days. We fly into Zurich Airport and will be spending a week in Wengen, three nights in Zermatt, and four nights in Lucerne. Those will be our three bases and we may take day trips out of these three locations. We are flying back home out of Zurich. We plan to purchase 15-day Swiss Travel Passes. Our travel will be entirely within Switzerland. Questions:

Are we OK in waiting until we arrive at Zurich Airport to purchase our Travel passes?

Do the travel passes come in paper form? We would like to avoid having to put them on our phones as we don't want three phones incurring $10 per day charges for international use.

We did a long trip through Switzerland in 2015 and we purchased our travel passes at the airport on arrival. They were in paper form. Is that still possible or have things changed?

Thank you.

Hugh from Minnesota.

Posted by
4749 posts

You can put the Pass in your Apple Wallet, which can be accessed without cell data on. I like purchasing in advance , and having a paper and an online copy of the Pass.
Have a great trip!

Posted by
4 posts

Last time I used Swiss pass for multiple days. It gives you free rides on most trains and 50% discount on mountain trains. Also some museums are free or cheaper. And get the app called sbb mobile it helps with planing trains. I am not sure about the other tickets tho.
You should never pay more than 75 CHF per day for public transportation in Switzerland.

Most locals have a half-fare card (185 CHF per year or 120 CHF for one month) which lets them buy day passes for 75 CHF. This is where this number comes from. If you buy them in bulk (get 6 pay for 5), it's even cheaper - 62.5 CHF per day. If you don't mind travelling on work days after 9 AM, it's 58 CHF for a 9-o'clock day pass or 47 CHF when you buy them in bulk.

Unfortunately, you can't get these day passes from the ticket machines if you don't have a half-fare card.

Posted by
72 posts

Excuse me but the information given in the last post is totally outdated. There isn't a 9-o-clock SBB train pass anymore and you do not get any discount if you buy 6 day passes. Also, the Half Fare Card at CHF 120 is for tourists only.

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