Visitor Oyster Card for London tourists

Back in January short stay visitors to London wanting to use the tube were left facing either a ridiculously high cash fare or the potential admin nightmare of the Oyster Card system - as I wrote in a post back then.

A comment yesterday by Jason (thanks Jason) made me revisit my January post only to find that some of the links I had provided to the Transport for London (TFL) website were no longer valid. Oh the joy of linking to other sites!

Anyway, on the TFL site I found out that a new type of Oyster Card aimed specifically at short stay visitors had been introduced back in March.

The new card, called the Visitor Oyster Card, does seem to address some of the issues I mentioned in my January post, e.g. the ease of getting a refund.

The Visitor Oyster Card itself costs £2 (non-refundable unlike the £3 refundable deposit on the regular Oyster Card) and comes preloaded with either £10 or £15, bringing the total initial cost to £12 or £17.

You can add credit to your Visitor Oyster Card should you need to and can get unused credit up till £5 refunded without completing any forms. Having to complete forms to get a refund was one of the issues I had with the regular Oyster Card back in January.

The credit on the card does not expire, so you could opt to save the card for any future visits to London or give it to someone else, if you have no plans to visit London again.

The one change I would like to see for the Visitor Oyster Card to become really attractive to short stay visitors is the ability for more than one person to travel on the same card at the same time. Currently while you can let other people use your Visitor Oyster Card, only one person can travel on an Oyster card at any one time. If the swipe system could be changed to allow multiple-person swipes, I would be very tempted to buy a Visitor Oyster Card for my family when they come to visit.

As with any other system the Visitor Oyster Card will be great for some and useless to others, but I think the Visitor Oyster Card is a tiny step in the right direction for short stay visitors to London.

Please note that the above details (prices, etc.) were true at the time of writing. You should visit the Transport For London website for further, up to date information about the Visitor Oyster Card.

TAGS: London, travel, Visitor Oyster Card

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