Switzerland: Cable cars in the Alps very popular

AThere are a lot of cheers coming from the Swiss Alps these days. Thanks to good snow conditions and decent weather, many mountain railways are reporting double-digit increases in the number of guests during the Christmas holidays. Of course, there is a base effect that needs to be taken into account: last year, a sudden onset of heat disrupted the start of the winter sports season in many cases.

The biggest success report to date came from Jungfraubahn Holding AG on Thursday. The listed mountain railway company from the Bernese Alps is known far beyond the Swiss borders because it has access to the Jungfraujoch – which is easily marketable internationally: this is the name of the connecting ridge between the peaks of Mönch and Jungfrau. It lies 3,500 meters above sea level and offers a spectacular view of the Aletsch Glacier as well as a clear view over the mountains to France, Germany and Italy. Last year the Jungfrau Railway brought over a million guests there, 61 percent more than the year before. “We have almost reached the level before the pandemic again,” says Urs Kessler, who has been running the business for many years. Kessler sees his company clearly on the way back to normality. Corona suddenly switched off this normality at the worst possible time. In December 2020, the Jungfrau Railway completed its mammoth project called the V-Bahn. With investments of 470 million francs, it was the largest mountain railway project in the entire Alpine region. Its heart is a new valley station in the town of Grindelwald, from which a gondola lift leads to a newly built mountain station above Kleine Scheidegg. The new “Eiger Express” covers 1,400 meters in altitude in just 15 minutes.

But instead of being overrun by guests, they largely stayed away as a result of the pandemic. In 2020, the Jungfrau Railway made a loss for the first time in its more than hundred-year company history. The following year also ended in the red due to huge losses in sales. But in 2022, many guests came back and with them the numbers were in the black. The upswing continued: In the first half of 2023, the group achieved a net profit of 35 million francs on sales of 132.5 million francs – an impressive return on sales of 26 percent.

Visitors from abroad are back

Business also went well in the second half of the year, as Kessler emphasized in an interview with the FAZ. “Today we are exactly where we had hoped to be in 2021.” The company has been debt-free since the end of 2022. The V-Bahn project was very worthwhile and fully met expectations. Thanks to the valley station's direct connection to the Swiss Railways rail network, the number of guests arriving by public transport has increased by more than a third. Around half of the visitors now come by train. In the summer there was sometimes a lack of space on the Berner Oberlandbahn feeder trains due to the large number of people.

Kessler, known for its aggressive marketing, said it continued to drum up advertising in important foreign markets during the pandemic. This paid off in 2023: 91 percent of guests at Jungfraujoch came from abroad. Visitors from Southeast Asia, India and the United States in particular came back. Chinese and Japanese traveling in groups were still holding back. Kessler is expecting a new surge in guests here this year. According to analysts, however, it will probably be years before Chinese people travel to Europe again in the same numbers as before.

The winter season got off to an excellent start with a 28 percent increase in visitors in December, says Kessler. Nevertheless, the busy managing director does not want to sit back: “We have further strategic projects ahead of us.” These include the new construction of the Firstbahn, which leads up to the local mountain of the municipality of Grindelwald, and the expansion of the mountain station on the Jungfraujoch. Kessler estimates the costs for these two projects to be around 100 million francs each. He is also planning to build an alpine solar system. The goal behind this is to one day be able to independently supply all of our own systems and operations in the mountain region with energy. The Jungfrau Railway already operates its own hydroelectric power station.