A Tourism Transport Card Great Value For Vienna But Awful For Paris

A Comprehensive study reveals whether tourist card packages are worth it – Vienna, Frankfurt, and Rome’s tourist passes offer the most savings

Online moving platform Movinga.com have produced a study in cooperation with package holiday specialists TravelBird.nl presenting the savings associated with tourist travel tickets within cities as opposed to purchasing tickets individually. Movinga, carried out the research after releasing their 2017 Relocation Price Index which detailed, in part, local costs of public transportation. They then teamed up with TravelBird to expand on this study.

Since most tourist passes contain all-inclusive public transport cards as well as discounts on museums and activities, the companies wanted to investigate the value of these convenience deals. TravelBird and Movinga hope the study will empower tourists to think critically about ticket options and will offer a method of calculating potential savings for popular vacation destinations.

For twenty popular tourist cities, the Index compares the cost of a weekend with and without a tourist pass. To do so, the price of two one-day passes for public transport plus entry to three popular tourist destinations in the city was calculated and compared to the price of a 48-hour welcome pass plus discounted entry costs to the same tourist destinations. The costs for the two one-day passes were taken from research for the 2017 Movinga Relocation Price Index and the welcome pass price was taken from tourism boards for each city. To create a sample itinerary for prospective tourists, three popular paid tourist destinations (e.g. national galleries, museums, and popular tours) were selected based on Tripadvisor popularity rankings. The Index is ranked based on the savings made with a welcome card.

A weekend in Rome, for example, breaks down as follows:

• Without a welcome pass, visitors pay €12.50 for two days of public transit, €12.00 for a ticket to the Colosseum, €10.00 for a ticket to the Castel Sant’Angelo, and €20.00 for a ticket to the Galleria Borghese. That’s €54.50 (£46.42) in total.
• With a welcome pass, visitors pay €28.00 for the pass itself, €7.50 for the Colosseum, €5.00 for the Castel Sant’Angelo, and receive free entry to the Galleria Borghese. That’s €40.50 in total, making the welcome card worth it with €14.00 (£11.92) in savings.

The results show Vienna, Austria ranked in position 1, whose welcome pass yields an approximate, savings equivalent to £36.11, followed by Frankfurt with savings equivalent to £12.27. This compares to the Paris, France, whose welcome pass yields a negative savings equivalent to approximately -£37.82.

Further findings from the study include:

• Paris, France has the most expensive welcome pass (€109.00/£92.84) and Frankfurt, Germany offers the least expensive welcome pass (€15.50/£13.21) as well as the second highest savings at €14.40 or £12.27.
• Cities whose welcome passes yield positive savings over £4.00 are, ordered from most saved to least: Vienna, Frankfurt, Rome, Cologne, Rejkjavík, Budapest, and Hamburg.
• Cities whose welcome passes yield negative savings over £4.00 are, ordered from most lost to least: Paris, Prague, Oslo, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Munich, Lisbon, and London.

“The welcome pass benefits vary city to city, and thus, so do the savings. While we chose to calculate savings based on three visitor activities, a pass like the Parisian card that offers free entry to multiple in-demand attractions, might work out in the favour of a tourist planning a jam-packed weekend,” Symen Jansma, CEO and founder at TravelBird said. “However, it’s clear that the well-organized tourist could benefit from buying separate public transit passes and paying in full for activities, especially when those activities allow for discovery of the city in an unique way.”

The study offers unique insight into not only the cost of a welcome pass but also how savings increase and decrease depending on how many attractions are visited for each city’s unique welcome pass program. Those looking to visit a new city will benefit from checking the costs of their planned itinerary with and without a welcome card to see which option offers the best balance of value and convenience.