How is the number of inbound/outbound that a country get determined ?

There is a trial in some countries where residents get 3 or in one case, 4 "inbound/outbound" days. Except Sweden (4 I/O days) the country's size doesn't matter, it's more whether the national company agreed to allow 3 such days. ÖBB, SBB, NS did for example. DB and SNCF didn't.

About Eurail passes: I mean how could Eurail limit train travel in the US/Australia/any non-Interrail country? It doesn't make any sense.

We should also not forget that before 2017-ish Interrail was not valid at all in your country of residence. Progress! :)

Thank you for your answer.

My point about the Eurail pass was more “The Eurail pass gives more right to citizens from other countries than European”, and “It is then technically possible not to make any limitation on the number of inbound/outbound journeys.”

I totally agree that the Interrail pass is definitely going in the right direction, and becoming more and more a global ticket in a fragmented European market. It remains that this Inbound/Outbound is a factor of inequality between European residents. Someone who lives in Paris will need to pay more than me to do the same trip because of this.

To be clear: I am totally aware that France is totally not a pro-Interrail country, which is a shame. I am just trying to understand how this situation has arisen, not blaming the Interrail team. I am already quite happy with having 3 days of Inbound/Outbound in Austria. I am just curious to know how this kind of thing is decided.

The whole aim of Eurail and Interrail passes, from the train operators’ point of view, is to bring in more revenue.

People tend to do a lot of travel in their home country. So if rail passes allowed unlimited travel in one’s own country, it would tend to reduce revenue for the railway, not increase it. Why would I buy expensive tickets to travel in my own country if I could get unlimited travel on a cheaper pass?

When travelling outside your own country, there’s a natural limit to how much travel you can, or want to, do in one country.

At least in Vienna, you have very easy way to the borders, plus the KlimaTicket for domestic travel. (I wish we had something similar in the UK, but the equivalent is £600 for a week, and doesn’t include local travel)

Certainly if the UK Interrail pass came with more home country days, I’d find it very appealing. But I’d expect it to cost more.

I can totally understand the point of having a “discounted” Interrail pass in order for people to travel abroad at a reduced price, so that railway companies can make more profit on domestic travel. Behind it, there is the idea that Interrail passes are made so that people can make some train trips between European cities during vacation.

Yet, this limitation is made under the hypothesis that nobody would want to have some kind of ticket valid inside your country AND outside your country, even at a higher price.

thibcabe has quoted an article of the T & C which is very relevant : the idea is that it an Interrail pass could be cheaper than some domestic tickets.

I would first of all point out that this is not really true, even in France. If you wanted to take 4 times the TGV, there would be some rare occasions where it would cost more than 363€ as a whole for an adult, (283€ of Interrail + 4*20€ of reservations). But would it be unfair, as you are committed to pay upfront for all the trips - and in general, it would cost you more ?

The second thing is that Interrail is already unfair : people from smaller countries have an advantage over people from a bigger country, as I have in Austria. My girlfriend in Paris is not that lucky.

I think that as a whole, it is a bit outrageous that we are not able to consider trains as a way to actually travel in Europe from point A to B, and that trains travel should be limited to people wanting to go on a train trip across Europe or to domestic travel. In my situation, I feel deeply that I am expected to go from Paris to Vienna by plane, despite having to do it every six weeks.

It would be really great if Interrail was able to propose a pass (even if its price depends on the country of residence) which would allow to travel in your country and other countries. There could be two products : some passes which are only for a limited period of time of for a limited number of trips as the standard one, and a product similar to the BC 100, or TGV Max, or General Abo, but for the whole Europe. The price would be probably high (probably around 5000€/year), but it would at least give trains a competitive advantage over planes in terms of freedom and range. This could of course be a complement to other “discounted” passes for people wanting to make a train trip in Europe.

It depends on the case but as a simple example:

The BahnCard 100 in 1st class is €7999 for a year.

4 3-month passes 1st class are €4856, or even less if bought in a sale.

Second example:

The 3-day global pass that existed for a short while would often be cheaper than a longer-distance return to London during peak times, especially if you need some flexibility and/or can't buy in advance. This pass has now been replaced by a 4-day pass, but it looks like this can still be cheaper, especially in 1st class (sometimes a lot cheaper), than e.g. a return from Edinburgh or Newcastle to London.

​@Karchoc  Currently the extra Homecountry Traveldays are a try out : ) I already saw it for Dutch and Austrian passes. The offical rules is still 2days per passs. It´s aimed for travelers that live far from the Borders eg. Northern Sweden, North Scotland or East Turkey (currently it´s possible to request extra HomeCountry days via Customer Service and is decided case by case)  

The railpasses often can be cheaper than local ticket offers like the compare of BC100 in Germany and 4 * 3 Month Interrailpasses done by Rian above 

And like the Route Scotland to London were a 4 days pass still can be cheaper and more flexible like a British ticket.
It works even in Germany and is used by some experienced travelers. Because many used the Interrailpass just domestic within UK the British Railcompanies already announced to leave the Interrail Area but luckily the British Railcompanies & Eurail came to an agreement to stop selling a 3days in a month Globalpass (4days in a months is now the smallest pass) 

The Shareholders of Eurail are still the European Railcompanies means they still get some money out of it but ofcourse not as much they would get when they sell their own offers. 

Reading this post I notice, I wasn’t aware some passes have 3 home-country-days. 
How can you know, how many there are on your pass, before actually activating it?

You can't really know in advance except by doing some research whether your country of residence is included or not in the trial.

At the moment all residents of Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland get 3 I/O days. Sweden gets 4.

(I might be missing a few countries!)

You can activate your pass with a future start date, check the number of inbound/outbound days and then deactivate the pass again.

True. Not before buying it though.

Thanks! I activated the pass and in fact, I have 3 I/O days even though it’s only a 4,day pass 😊

@rdvborgt has given a great example with the BahnCard 100. I reckognize that as such, authorizing any number of inbound/outbound journey would not beneficial in some cases for some companies.

I still think that it would be great if Interrail could also sell a product where you could travel in your country of residence and also travel abroad, with a price depending on the country of residence. I know that some railway companies are not exactly happy with not having total yield management for their trains, but yield management is much less critical for railway companies as for airlines in my opinion. From my understanding, the economic model of rail is quite different from the one of airlines. Airlines are mainly run by marginal costs, whereas rail companies have much higher infrastructure costs. Therefore, it is much less of a problem for a train company to run a train half empty than for an airline to have a plane half empty; which explains how products like Interrail can still be beneficial for railway companies. Also, trains are intertwined with commuter traffic, which works a lot more on the assumption that regularity is more important than having all the trains full.

My understanding is that customers are also not really happy with the uncertainty over prices, and knowing that last minutes departures will always be extremely expensive. This is the very point of Interrail passes : to provide flexibility, despite the fact that in a lot of cases, using an Interrail pass is a bit more expensive than buying point to point tickets.

Therefore, by exploiting the fact that it is much more possible for railway companies to give flexibility to their clients than airlines, railway companies could get a competitive edge over airlines by providing a product which gives to customers a freedom that airlines cannot really afford to give. It would be really great to have a ticket in your hand which allows you to travel freely in your country and outside of your country. This could change the image of train travel in Europe.

I would also like to emphasize that the multiplication of actors in Europe can only make travelling by train more and more difficult, if no integration effort is made. Travelling between France and Austria already requires going through 2 to 3 reservation systems. In the future, having more and more companies having their own prices and their own terms will create a combinatorial explosion and make train ticket reservation even more painful than it already is today.

Therefore, I think that it would really be amazing if an actor like Eurail could tackle this problem by giving to customers the possibility of navigating an integrated railway system. Right now, having such a limitation on Interrail passes show that we still consider that train travellers do not want to travel from point A to B, but just be able to just do train tours in Europe. The European train system lacks a global discount card the Interrail pass could be (the Interrail pass is in fact considered as a discount card by railway companies in a lot of situations).

To conclude, I know that it would require a lot of negociations and effort in order to have a product by Eurail which would be a train ticket for all Europe, but one can dream.