Seat reservations Glacier Express

Quokueko59

We thought we were buying seats on trains from St. Moritz to Zermatt but it seems we only bought the right to buy seats and not actual seats. what am I doing wrong/

Danhiel

Hello Quokueko59

On sbb.ch or in the SBB Mobile app you can only buy tickets, but not reserve seats.

If you want to travel in the Glacier Express panoramic trains, you should use this site:

http://www.glacierexpress.ch

If you already have a ticket, you can only reserve seats, otherwise you can buy tickets and reserve seats in the same transaction.

Kind regards
Danhiel

Krist

Quokueko59 we only bought the right to buy seats

There is no such thing as a “right to buy seats”. Everyone can reserve seats. You do not even need a ticket to reserve seats.

To travel on a train you always need a ticket for the route the train travels on. Tickets are for a route, not a train. You can buy a ticket between any two places in Switzerland, and it does not matter how many trains, trams, busses, cable cars are involved. And those tickets can be bought from SBB, even when other companies are involved. It is a common misunderstanding among people unfamiliar with train travel in this part of the world to believe that when you buy a ticket you buy a seat in a vehicle. That is not what you buy. What you pay for is to travel a route.

So you bought a ticket for the route St. Moritz to Zermatt, and that ticket allows you to travel on that route, on the trains that ply that route. And there are lots of other trains on that route. Tickets btw. do not need to be bought in advance. You could buy that ticket even just a minute before you depart… As long as you have it when you board it is fine.

Reservations are for a seat in a particular train.
On most trains there are not seat reservations. On some trains you have reservations. And on a handfull of trains reservations are even compulsory. The Glacier Express is one of those trains.

So you have two options:

Use your ticket to travel from St. Mortiz to Zermatt on normal service trains. This will require a few train transfers, but is perfectly doable, and some people even prefer that, as those trains are often less crowded, and have windows that open.
Get a seat reservation separately for the Glacier Express service you want to travel on.

Quokueko59

Krist Thank you, unused to this kind of ticketing. when we have traveled in Europe previously was always asked about seats, and distinct trains and times. Guess it’s time for this old dog to learn new tricks.

Krist

Your previous travel may have been in France or Italy perhaps?

In the “Latin” countries it is indeed so that on long distance trains the ticket comes with a reservation included and is train specific. We call that IRT ticket (Integrated Reservation tickets". In the Germanic part of Europe ticketing still follows the traditional NRT (Non Reserved Ticket) pattern, where tickets are for a rout, and by default flexible, and seat reservations are extra, and usually not compulsory.

What confuses things a bit is that in Germanic Europe the railways have now also started to sell discounted train specific tickets, but that is a fairly new thing.