Worth comparing: This is how you can save on train tickets abroad

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A woman books a train journey with Deutsche Bahn (DB).
Martin Vetterli

observer

In fact, everything speaks in favor of the train. There are no traffic jams, there is time for deep conversations and long books, the restaurant comes with you, and you maintain the climate. But before you can board the train in ultimate comfort, as the train advertisements promise, a difficult journey into the world of booking platforms begins. Whether and where you buy train tickets depends largely on your personal tolerance for disappointment. Searching isn’t as simple as flights, where you can find the right flight with just a few clicks on sites with well-known names like Opodo, Swoodoo, Kayak and Skyscanner.

If you want to book train tickets online abroad, you need to find your way through the websites of national railway companies and independent platforms such as Thetrainline or Rail Europe. Sometimes they give good results, sometimes they give bad results, but most of all they give a confusing number. After the third page at the latest, you give up and buy something.

Before you come back in a daze: Visit Chronotrains. Here you can see at a glance which destinations are several hours away by train. It’s a heat map of sorts that makes you want to travel to play.

Railroads resist a uniform platform

Also: There is hope. The EU is planning a unified booking portal that works just as well for flights. To do this, he wants to force the railways to disclose all current data and prices. However, resistance to the “multimodal digital mobility services” initiative has emerged. France’s SNCF and Deutsche Bahn want to prevent their business from shifting to platforms backed by wealthy US investors. And immediately there was the first delay in the EU calendar. The law will only be negotiated after the next EU parliamentary elections next June and will probably not come into force until 2027.

There are also independent platforms in Switzerland. First of all, there is Fairtiq, which “always charges the cheapest ticket available for the route traveled” (self-promotion). So far only in Switzerland and a few parts of Germany, France and Austria.

Easily save 50 or more francs

Anders Simple Train specializes in international train tickets. Here you first need to pay a deposit of 10 francs and request it at least five days before departure. However, the Zurich start-up is keeping its promise that “ticket prices will not be higher than SBB or other platforms.”

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A random example – two trips to Naples, Berlin and Bordeaux, two weeks and two months each, simultaneously on eight online counters – showed that it is always worth comparing. You can easily save 50 or more francs for the exact same train journey.

Simple Train usually offers the best price. The destinations’ train sites were almost always cheaper than Thetrainline, Raileurope, Omio and SBB. Only one small retail outlet has been able to keep up: the official SBB retail outlet of the Bider & Tanner bookstore in Basel.

Source :Blick

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Tim

Tim

I'm Tim David and I work as an author for 24 Instant News, covering the Market section. With a Bachelor's Degree in Journalism, my mission is to provide accurate, timely and insightful news coverage that helps our readers stay informed about the latest trends in the market. My writing style is focused on making complex economic topics easy to understand for everyone.

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