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Successful summer 2023
Record numbers for Postbuses in the Lauterbrunnen Valley and Iseltwald
Summer 2023 is a milestone for PostBus leisure travel in the Bernese Oberland. Having tapered off during the coronavirus pandemic, the passengers have now returned. Some passenger frequencies are even significantly higher than before the pandemic. The routes in the Lauterbrunnen Valley and to Iseltwald have set new records.
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When the weather is good, there are more passengers in excursion areas. But this simple equation didn’t apply during the coronavirus years of 2020 and 2021. In some cases, there was a huge drop in passenger frequencies, especially in areas such as the Bernese Oberland, which normally attracts a large number of visitors from abroad. Now the slump is over. This is shown by the balance sheets for the popular PostBus routes in the Bernese Oberland for the four summer months from June to September 2023.
The increase in passengers on PostBus route 141 in the Lauterbrunnen Valley is impressive. In the period from June to September 2023, 262,000 passengers travelled from Lauterbrunnen to Stechelberg. That’s 22 percent more than in 2019, before the coronavirus crisis. Compared to 2022, when visitors from abroad were slow to return, this represents an increase of 60 percent.
PostBus route 103 Interlaken Ost–Iseltwald has been making a name for itself since spring 2022. Because the jetty in Iseltwald is the setting for the South Korean cult series “Crash Landing on You”, fans have been making the pilgrimage to the small village on Lake Brienz. In order to carry more passengers, PostBus has been using double-decker buses on the route since 1 June 2023. The boom peaked in the summer of 2023, with Postbuses carrying 370,000 passengers from June to September. This equates to 27 percent more than in the same period last year and 31 percent more than in 2019, when hardly any foreign fans of the series visited Iseltwald due to coronavirus.
Postbuses also carried significantly more passengers this summer on two routes from Interlaken West. On route 101 to Beatenberg, there were 13 percent more passengers than in 2019 and 12 percent more than in 2022. And route 105 to Wilderswil also saw an increase in passengers of 13 percent compared to 2019 and 10 percent compared to 2022. The seasonal tourist routes Rosenlaui (Meiringen–Schwarzwaldalp) and Central Alps reached the level of previous years.
Information: PostBus Media Unit, +41 58 338 57 00, infomedia@postbus.ch
