In a ranking published in December 2024, Swiss Rail was ranked the second best railway company in Europe. This week, RTS reported that its ranking had dropped to 11th out of 27.
Why? Oddly, in its app, Swiss Rail presents half price tickets as the default price, describing them as “tickets from” the half price amount. This wasn’t picked up by the analysts at T&E until later in December. Once adjusted, the relatively high (full) price of train tickets in Switzerland torpedoed Swiss Rail’s overall ranking.
Ticket price is one of eight elements in the scores driving the ranking so doubling it has a significant impact.
In the original publication, Swiss Rail was ranked second behind Trenitalia. Now in the adjusted publication it is behind Trenitalia, RegioJet, Austrian Rail (OSS), Renfe, Italo, SNCF and a number of other European rail operators. And Swiss Rail ticket prices are now the third highest, behind only the Eurostar and the British rail company GWR. At the same time, train tickets in Switzerland are heavily subsidised – Swiss Rail receives roughly CHF 3 billion of public money a year.
However, even after the ticket price adjustment Swiss Rail remains number one for booking experience and reliability.
More on this:
RTS article (in French) – Take a 5 minute French test now
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