Intercity hotels with free train travel

[AnkleBoots]

The Intercity Hotel chain offers free local transport which in the case of Duesseldorf area means about €100 of value for a one-night stay, based on two people sharing and using trains on the whole of the VRR network on the day of arrival and departure.

Do any other hotels do anything similar in Europe?

 

[steevp]

We got free tram passes at the Ibis in Basle - no idea how far we could have gone, just used it to go into town for a meal and a wander

 

[AlterEgo]

We got free tram passes at the Ibis in Basle - no idea how far we could have gone, just used it to go into town for a meal and a wander

Indeed this is the case for all hotels in Basel.

 

[bspahh]

We got free tram passes at the Ibis in Basle - no idea how far we could have gone, just used it to go into town for a meal and a wander

The Basel Mobility Ticket is included with every hotel stay in Basel https://www.basel.com/en/Getting-there-exploring-the-City/Exploring-the-City/Mobility-Ticket It covers the city and the airport. This shows the area that is covered http://www.tnw.ch/assets/files/content/liniennetz-basel-aggio/TNW_Liniennetz_Basel_Umgebung.pdf

You get the card when you check into the hotel. If you have the hotel booking, you can also travel to the hotel for free.

 

[dutchflyer]

Yes, and in fact most in German speaking countries-Deutschland, also Austria and Switzerland.
It is much more prevalent in rural areas, best known is the Schwarzwald (the coockoo-clock black forest), where its is named KONUS karte and covers quite a large area. NOte that not all Hotels do partcipate!
DUS is good value-as are Essen, Dortmund etc, as it will cover the whole of VRR-Verbund (soon also into Arnhem/NL, now already to Venlo and Nijmegen by bus), but in other cases with large VerkehrsVerbund areas, the validity may still be limited to the town-zone.
The old yearly overveiw of passes etc of the mag. Todays Railways-EUR had an overview of such free travel, they still print hem when new ones are discovered.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

I think in Berlin it's limited to the central zone (within the Ringbahn).
But very useful, also valid 24 hours, not just the few hours left on the day of arrival like some day tickets.
Intercity Hotels is (or was) part of the DB group, which explains their handy locations near main stations as well as the transport offers.
It's what British Transport Hotels could have been had it stayed in railway hands.

It took me ages to find the one at Hamburg Altona until I discovered it was integral to the station!

 

[Groningen]

With the Intercity Hotel in Germany one should look for FreeCityTicket.

The value of your FreeCityTicket:
Examples of 2-day tickets with comparable range and corresponding usage requirements:
Fare for 2 days for the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region (Wuppertal, Gelsenkirchen, Düsseldorf and Essen): € 54.80
Fare for 2 days in Berlin: € 42.00
Fare for 2 days in Hamburg: € 35.80
Fare for 2 days in Stuttgart: € 28.60

Also Frankfurt Airport and Nuremberg, but no prices given.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The Intercity Hotel chain offers free local transport which in the case of Duesseldorf area means about €100 of value for a one-night stay, based on two people sharing and using trains on the whole of the VRR network on the day of arrival and departure.

Do any other hotels do anything similar in Europe?

Most hotels in Switzerland do, because it's legally required - there is a tourist tax that pays for[1] such a ticket in order to discourage car use. It's a great idea, I'd love to see it here at least in cities and national parks.

[1] Not full price, as it recognises most people either won't use it or will only use it in a very local area.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

At Geneva airport, there is a machine in arrivals which spits out free rail tickets to Cornavin.
I can't see that catching on in the UK...

 

[Groningen]

In Geneve it only takes 7 minutes from the airport to the citycentre with the train. The price is 2 Francs.

 

[theblackwatch]

Unfortunately, InterCity Hotels don't seem to specify quite what the free ticket you get actually is, other that using the description "In all our hotels' locations a FreeCityTicket is included. This enables guests to use all of the local public transport free of charge". For example, if I stay at the IC hotel in Ulm, where is this 'FreeCityTicket' actually valid and on what? I gather that some IC hotels actually provide you with a Lander ticket for the area, but there seems to be a lot of secrecy with regard to providing validity maps in Germany generally - they seem incapable of producing anything like an easy to understand Travelcard Zones map!

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Unfortunately, InterCity Hotels don't seem to specify quite what the free ticket you get actually is, other that using the description "In all our hotels' locations a FreeCityTicket is included. This enables guests to use all of the local public transport free of charge". For example, if I stay at the IC hotel in Ulm, where is this 'FreeCityTicket' actually valid and on what? I gather that some IC hotels actually provide you with a Lander ticket for the area, but there seems to be a lot of secrecy with regard to providing validity maps in Germany generally - they seem incapable of producing anything like an easy to understand Travelcard Zones map!

I've just checked my Berlin ticket, and it says it is valid in zones ABC.
That gets you to Schönefeld Airport and Potsdam, in fact anywhere bounded by the Aussenring and a bit further into Brandenburg.
You have to go hunting for the VBB map however.
It's also a bit awkward if arriving by air, as you have to reach your hotel first to get the ticket.

 

[radamfi]

It's a great idea, I'd love to see it here at least in cities and national parks.

If the local transport isn't that great then it may be could be counter-productive as it shows the city in a poor light to tourists. It would also contribute to propping up the deregulated bus industry. In Switzerland and Germany, the tourist tax goes into local government coffers so does at least contribute at least indirectly to paying for local transport and maybe there isn't even a need to compensate the transport organisations, which would almost certainly be required in a British version.

 

[30907]

Unfortunately, InterCity Hotels don't seem to specify quite what the free ticket you get actually is, other that using the description "In all our hotels' locations a FreeCityTicket is included. This enables guests to use all of the local public transport free of charge". For example, if I stay at the IC hotel in Ulm, where is this 'FreeCityTicket' actually valid and on what? I gather that some IC hotels actually provide you with a Lander ticket for the area, but there seems to be a lot of secrecy with regard to providing validity maps in Germany generally - they seem incapable of producing anything like an easy to understand Travelcard Zones map!

You are right that IC are a little coy! However, on my first and only stay, in Stralsund, I was pleased to discover that the whole of Rügen Island was covered...

I'd be delighted to be offered a Laenderticket, but surprised because there is an 0900 M-F restriction which would be inconvenient for a business hotel. An all-zones card for the relevant local transport authority is more use. If in doubt, it will certainly cover the whole of the city authority area.

As to maps, I've always found a zonal map on the appropriate local transport (not DB) website in Germany.

 

[AnkleBoots]

Fare for 2 days in Berlin: € 42.00

An ABC day ticket for Berlin is €7.70 so I'd be interested to know how they got to €42

 

[Bletchleyite]

In Geneve it only takes 7 minutes from the airport to the citycentre with the train. The price is 2 Francs.

It's free if you pick up a ticket in the arrivals hall.

 

[coppercapped]

Unfortunately, InterCity Hotels don't seem to specify quite what the free ticket you get actually is, other that using the description "In all our hotels' locations a FreeCityTicket is included. This enables guests to use all of the local public transport free of charge". For example, if I stay at the IC hotel in Ulm, where is this 'FreeCityTicket' actually valid and on what? I gather that some IC hotels actually provide you with a Lander ticket for the area, but there seems to be a lot of secrecy with regard to providing validity maps in Germany generally - they seem incapable of producing anything like an easy to understand Travelcard Zones map!

Whee! A blast from the past! I stayed in the InterCity hotel in Ulm when I went there for a job interview in 1974 - then it was the Bundesbahn Hotel, known by everybody in the town as the BuBaHo!

Since those days Ulm has its own Verkehrsbund, know as DING being a shortened form of Donau-Iller-Nahverkersverbund-GmbH. (Donau is the river we call the Danube and the Iller is a river which we call the - Iller!) This stretches over a wide area so I suspect that any free ticket given out in Ulm will cover just the trams and buses within the town.

I could be wrong but you are correct about the pricing system being tricky to decipher. In Munich the city and its surroundings are divided into Zones and Rings and Areas. Zones are used for single and strip tickets, Rings are used for weekly and monthly seasons (each Zone is divided into 4 Rings) and Areas are used for day tickets and some other tickets.

Making a map of that is tricky!

 

[AnkleBoots]

Currently rated as 33 of 37 on a popular ratings site, I am not going to rush to visit that particular hotel! The comments mention tram and bus but not train so I guess you are right about the area of the ticket.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

An ABC day ticket for Berlin is €7.70 so I'd be interested to know how they got to €42

The VBB day ticket is €21 (all of Berlin/Brandenburg), so €42 for 2 days.
But the post-0900 off-peak version is only €29 for 5 people!
https://www.vbb.de/en/article/tickets-and-fares/ticket-fares/ticket-fares/5649.html

 

[bspahh]

Currently rated as 33 of 37 on a popular ratings site, I am not going to rush to visit that particular hotel! The comments mention tram and bus but not train so I guess you are right about the area of the ticket.

I stayed there in November and it seemed fine. I just used it as a place with a room with a bed.

I once stayed at the Mannheim InterCity hotel had a "no smoking" room on the ground floor near the reception, where the room reeked of cigarette smoke. They didn't have any others so I had to lump it. I suspect it was used for fag breaks by the reception staff.

 

[godfreycomplex]

Intercity Hotels is (or was) part of the DB group, which explains their handy locations near main stations as well as the transport offers.
It's what British Transport Hotels could have been had it stayed in railway hands.

It took me ages to find the one at Hamburg Altona until I discovered it was integral to the station!

So - called "lodge turns" are still very common in Germany; and indeed I believe that is the primary reason that Intercity Hotels still exist (and exist in slightly bizarre locations; such as Enschede and Schwerin). DB staff get heavily discounted rates off-duty I believe. Usually the land they were built on was/is railway-owned.

 

[coppercapped]

So - called "lodge turns" are still very common in Germany; and indeed I believe that is the primary reason that Intercity Hotels still exist (and exist in slightly bizarre locations; such as Enschede and Schwerin). DB staff get heavily discounted rates off-duty I believe. Usually the land they were built on was/is railway-owned.

The Ulmer 'BuBaHo' (InterCity Hotel) is part of the railway station. It was built in the 1950s as Ulm was being rebuilt after the bombing raids in December 1944 up to March 1945 which killed some 1,700 people and left 25,000 homeless. Four fifths of the historical old town was destroyed, only some 1,700 of the 13,000 old buildings remained intact. One of the buildings lost, close to the railway station, was the house in which Albert Einstein was born.

 

[DJBut]

Visitors who stay in accommodation in the Chamonix Valley (hotels, gites, campsites, etc) can pick up a free pass which entitles them unrestricted access to nearly the full length of the electrified metre gauge 'Ligne de Saint Gervais-Vallorcine' (31 km). Only the short section from Servoz to St Gervais is excluded. Local buses are also included. The recently modernised route with high quality rolling stock makes a stay in the valley a real delight. However the line is closed for further improvement between April and June 2017.

 

[AnkleBoots]

Used this ticket this weekend on a bus at the extremity of the VRR region (east of Dortmund, to the airport) and it was examined very closely and suspiciously by the bus driver. He let me on with it eventually but clearly not so many people use these on buses!

It's just a scrappy piece of cardboard so I can see why he was suspicious.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Yes, and in fact most in German speaking countries-Deutschland, also Austria and Switzerland.

It is much more prevalent in rural areas, best known is the Schwarzwald (the coockoo-clock black forest), where its is named KONUS karte and covers quite a large area. NOte that not all Hotels do partcipate!

In CH it is normally mandatory and paid via the tourist tax.

 

[bradford758]

Stayed at an apartment in Garmish Partenkirchen and we got a ticket for the local buses and the Z. train to the first stop. Didn't use it as most things were within walking distance.

Sent from my 4009X using Tapatalk

 

[Gerald Fiennes]

A few points:

• I think the Dusseldorf IC Hotel is exceptional in offering a VRR ticket. I can't think of another that does: they normally offer city and immediate suburban area validity only, so I can see why the bus driver in Dortmund was suspicious!
• The IC hotel chain was sold to Steigenberger about 15 years ago and they have invested in some new buildings (eg. Mannheim, Schonefeld, Dresden, Hamburg Hbf). It's still a pretty good choice, but some of them could do with a little refurbishment IMHO (Ulm, Munich, Berlin Ostbahnhof).
• The time I stayed in Mannheim, there were big corridor parties going on so it was very noisy. It was a festival of some kind (April), and the staff didn't seem that interested in getting some order restored so my impression was likewise less than favourable.
• Lodging turns indeed are quite common on DB and one can often see many DB staff crew in during the late evening. Those on the last ICE to Belgium also use the Park Inn at Brussels, it's always interesting to see just how many crew they have (NB. the same level of staffing at weekends!) Once the German railways are franchised , this will of course end!
• In Switzerland, hotels in a number of cities offer free transport. The ones I know of are Basel, Bern, Lausanne and Neuchatel (this covers the whole Canton so is particularly good value!) Not Zurich, though, at least so far. This is done to promote public transport use and discourage car access to city centres and is a blessing in disguise given the complete lack of car parking in most swiss city centres. The scheme also covers your journey to the hotel: you just need to have proof that you have a booking there for that day. In many other places, if you stay more than two days you will offered a visitor card (Gastekarte) which covers the local rail/bus/post bus areas, but normally with validity just in that town/village, and often offers a few francs off admission to museums or any luftseilbahnen/funiculars etc. there are. In CH, every little helps!

 

[EM2]

Is there one of these hotels that would allow me to get a train into Frankfurt and back, but is in one of the other nearby cities, e.g. Cologne?

 

[takke]

Indeed this is the case for all hotels in Basel.

Geneva too.

 

[AnkleBoots]

Is there one of these hotels that would allow me to get a train into Frankfurt and back, but is in one of the other nearby cities, e.g. Cologne?

Probably Cologne is too far.

Dortmund is a lot closer to Dusseldorf that Cologne is to Frankfurt.