Booking trains for Austria and Italy

You don't need to book in advance to take a Frecciarossa.

Except for long week-ends (i.e. May 1) high speed trains rarely sell out and tickets can be purchased up to 15 minutes before departure time.

In the worst case scenario you have to wait for the next train or travel in 1st. Since the premium classes on Freccia trains are so expensive, 9 italians out of 10 prefer to wait for the next train and tourists can always find a couple of seats in those cars.

You must get bullet trains tickets in advance if you want/need to save some money. Discounted tickets can sell out and they can't be purchased on the same day of travel. Read terms&conditions about changes and refunds before clicking the buy button. Those great Savings come at a price, in short: change your plans and you have wasted your money.

On the day you'll have to pay the full price, called BASE. The BASE fare for each train is always displayed in advance on trenitalia.com/tcom-en

Italotreno.it/en. Is a private competing operator that runs only high speed trains. If their prices are lower than Trenitalia's, the travel times are the same and the departure times are ok for you... do as you like. Nobody can tell you what to do, it depends on your budget and on your travel plans.

This is an example of the reason to book ahead:

Milan-to-Florence, leaving at 10:15am
Train leaving tomorrow is 56 Euro
Train leaving March 12 is 32.90 Euro

www.trenitalia.com

I always use Trenitalia for purchasing tickets in Italy. You don’t have to book ahead to ride the faster trains, but the cheaper prices may be gone if you waited until April, for instance.

And doing the Milan to Florence train is even less if yountake the one an hour later. €19,90.

For Vienna to Salzburg you can prebook on OeBB for a savings or you can buy a ticket day of for abut the same price if you use Westbahn and the Westbahn station.

For VIENNA to Salzburg, you can take the Westbahn private train. Westbahn trains use many stations in Vienna, including Westbahnhof, Hauptbahnhof, Rennweg, Meidling, Landstraße, Praterstern. You buy Westbahn tickets on board the train. Trains leave every hour and the journey takes about 2.5 hours. Trains are new, fast and have free WiFi.

I've taken many trains in Italy, and always prebook a cheaper non-refundable fare for any journey over an hour or so.
The savings can be quite substantial.
Keep looking at the Trenitalia site regularly.
Last year I lucked in and found a two for one price for Bologna to Lucca; saving us a bit of money.
You also don't want to have to stand in the corridor on a train for a long period if you did not book a reserved seat.

S J, please note that

• there are no reseved seats on Italian local trains, called Regionale. You can buy a ticket 180 days in advance or 15 minutes before the departure, It doesn't make any difference: if the train fills up and all seats are taken, you have to stand.
• On high speed trains (Freccia and Italotreno) there are only reserved seats and the seat reservation always comes with the ticket. You can't stand on high speed trains and if you boarded one without a ticket for that train on that day you'd be fined on the spot and forced to buy a new ticket.

There is a direct night train from Salzburg to Venice, but it departs Salzburg pretty late. A problem that can be solved by backtracking a bit and board the night train at an earlier station. The day trains require at least one change.

There should generally be no need to "keep looking" at Trenitalia.com (or most other railway sites in various countries). When you look at single date a few months in the future, both high and low prices are available. The cheapest fares are the first to sell out (on a limited number of seats) and will typically go on sale about 180 days in advance of travel for Italy. So you can book now for May and the price range is similar on all three of your Italian routes. Percentage-wise, the deepest discounts can save more than 50%. On the other hand. that's "only" about 30 bucks per person, per trip. (Typical travel distances in other countries can be longer and more expensive, so advance savings add up to more actual cash.)

As always, a train traveller's best friend is www.seat61.com