There’s a confusing array of different travel passes for Switzerland, although all are good value – it just takes some untangling to see which is best suited for your trip. All the nationwide passes bring a discount on bike rental from train stations.

Top of the pile is the Swiss Pass, available from Swiss tourist offices at home or from airport and city stations in Geneva and Zürich (in francs only, and on production of a foreign passport). This gives free unlimited travel on consecutive days on all SBB and most private trains, as well as on all boats and postbuses and most city tram-and-bus networks. Where travel isn’t free (eg on cable-cars and mountain railways), discounts of 25 percent apply.

The Swiss Flexi-Pass gives free travel on any three days in 15, with the same privileges as the Swiss Pass. The Swiss Card gives a month’s travel by train, postbus and boat at fifty percent discount (plus partially reduced fares on most mountain railways), and one free return journey between the airport or border and your home- or hotel-base in Switzerland. The Swiss Transfer Ticket is geared towards winter-sports visitors, and is only available outside Switzerland: valid for a month, it’s limited to
giving one free journey from the airport or border to your resort, and back again. The Swiss Half-Fare Card, also valid for a month, is supposedly designed for motorists who might use public transport only occasionally within cities or on scenic routes. It lets you buy any number of individual tickets – in first or second class – for trains, buses, boats and most city networks at a fifty percent discount (most mountain railways also give half price). There are also offers for families travelling together: see p.76.

If you’re planning to concentrate on one area of the country, but still want the flexibility to visit local sights, it might be more economical to get a regional pass for your particular region. These vary across the country in both price and validity, but normally give 5 days’ free travel in 15 within a limited region, often including discounts for the other 10 days. Regional passes are most popular in the Berner Oberland, the Gstaad–Château d’Oex region, Central Switzerland around Lake Luzern, and the Lake Geneva shoreline, but are also offered by many other regional tourist offices. It would be pointless to list every one, and you’d do best to contact the Swiss tourist office in your home country for details of a pass covering your chosen region or regions before you depart.