Oeschinen Lake introduces advanced cable car booking amid tourism boom

People enjoy the view on the lake of Oeschinen. Keystone-SDA/ Anthony Anex

Starting in May anyone wishing to visit Oeschinen Lake in the Bernese Oberland can book their cable car ticket in advance. This is an attempt to better manage tourism to the popular destination.

+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

Oeschinen Lake is a picture-perfect Swiss postcard, making it a popular subject on social media. The hashtag #oeschinensee has been mentioned almost 140,000 times on Instagram alone. The result: the place is overrun with tourists. This has led to full rubbish bins and annoyed locals.

This is now set to change: From May 2025, visitors can buy an online ticket in advance for the gondola lift from Kandersteg up to Oeschinen Lake. The ticket is for a specific time slot. In the event of bad weather or illness, the ticket can be rebooked.

“The aim is to better distribute people on the mountain and reduce waiting times,” Christoph Wandfluh, board chairman of the Kandersteg-Oeschinensee gondola lift. Reservations are not absolutely necessary. “But if you make a reservation, you are guaranteed a place and no longer have to wait.”

According to Wandfluh, better distribution may well mean that fewer guests are travelling up the mountain at certain times than in the past.

Above all, he hopes that this will benefit nature. “Oeschinen Lake is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so we can’t trample the area to death.” At the same time, visitors will also have a better experience if the place is not overcrowded.

Wandfluh added that those responsible are not trying to prohibit tourists from visiting. It is primarily about awareness-raising and guidance.

Over the last four years, rangers have been on duty to make visitors aware of the rules of behaviour on site. And for the past six months, a social media programme has been in place to reach visitors before their excursion.

“We want to make people aware that they are not coming to a town or village, but to a mountain where it can get a bit hilly,” said Wandfluh.

In the past, it has happened time and again that hikers have walked on difficult sections of the trail in trainers or even flip-flops. Or they disregarded the barriers.

Like over the Ascension Day holiday last year, May 9, many people were on the Heuberg route above Oeschinen Lake. The route was marked as closed on information boards and on the internet due to the risk of wet snow avalanches.

This information was apparently not clear enough for many people. Disaster struck: a wet snow avalanche triggered a rockfall, four people were injured and one man died. And 62 people had to be flown out of the area by helicopter.

“We want to prevent people from coming to us ill-prepared,” said Wandfluh.

What is your opinion? Join the debate:

Translated from German by DeepL/jdp

How we work

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to [e-mail].