Preparing for a Swiss vacation in the 1960s

For decades, the Swiss have been heading south for holidays in the sunny canton of Ticino or Italy.

This 1968 film from the archives of Swiss Public Television SRF shows how people from the north prepared for these long car journeys, which would take them through one of the tunnels, sometimes on a car train, or over a mountain pass.

The commentator urges Swiss travellers heading to Italy to be honest with customs officials and to take petrol coupons with them. High domestic petrol prices led the Italian government to sell coupons to tourists that could be exchanged for fuel at the country’s service stations.

But many Swiss did not drive that far. Instead, they stopped to languish in Switzerland’s sunniest canton, Ticino.

At that time, Ticino was considered by many visitors from the north to be a folkloric canton symbolised by zoccolette (wooden shoes) and boccalini (drinking jugs). The Ticinese tried to shed this image by setting up a new tourism organisation, Ticino Turismo, in 1972.

Today, around 10% of Ticino’s gross domestic product is generated by tourism and 12% of workers are employed in the sector. The Swiss accounted for nearly 68% of overnight stays in Ticino in 2022, according to a Swiss tourism industry report.