Hola Barcelona Travel Card

If I could give zero stars, I would. Buying the Hola Card was hands down the worst decision of my entire trip. The entire system is an absolute nightmare, poorly managed, and completely unreliable. First of all, the instructions provided are completely useless. None of the guidance is correct or up to date. Station information, route details, and line schedules are entirely wrong. To make matters worse, the line blockages and service changes aren't reflected anywhere—not in their official guidance, and not even on Google Maps! You are left completely stranded, wandering around trying to find where the lines actually run while relying on map applications that give you dead ends because no one updated the system integrations. When you try to ask for help, it gets even more frustrating. Nobody knows anything! Staff and representatives have zero awareness of the current line blockages or rerouted paths. You get shuffled from one person to another, each giving contradictory or clueless answers. How can a public transit or travel card system operate when its own representatives have no idea how the lines are currently running? I wasted hours of my vacation suffering in the heat/transit hubs, trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B because the information provided was wrong at every single turn. I lost both valuable time and money on a service that promised convenience but delivered total confusion. Save yourself the massive headache: do not buy the Hola Card. Use single tickets, local contactless payments, or ride-shares instead. This card is a total scam and a massive waste of resources!

The voucher didn't work, it was 10 digits and the Metro devices need a 13 digit code. I had many phone calls with Barcelona tourist office, Viator and had live Metro personal contact. Eventually got another code via Tripadvisor from the tourist office, this code was known but didn't work on the ticket machine. Eventually I asked for a refund with Viator. Wasted a lot of time on this. Better buy your ticket at the Metro entrance, takes you less than 2 minutes and saves you from the idea to stop living

We bought the Hola Barcelona Card online in advance for five days. You received a QR code. And with this, you went to the machines (red) at the metro station and scanned it. Thereupon, two physical tickets came out as cards. Everything went very quickly and you could immediately use all public transportation for five days. You could use all metros, buses, and even the regional trains (Renfe) in the Barcelona area on public transit. That means you could use the regional train with this ticket from the airport to the city center and back without transferring.

With my family we bought the 5-day card and saved a lot. My rating of 3 is because of the obsolete technology that this card uses. It is printed on cardboard cards that get damaged when stored in pants pockets or bags and, furthermore, from so much use it demagnetizes. On our last trip we had to ask for assistance to leave the Barcelona Sants station because one of the cards demagnetized, they thought we had entered the system as stowaways, until they verified the validity, they did not let us leave.

Public transport in Barcelona is absurdly priced, so if you are staying for a couple of days and are on foot, you are almost forced to buy a Hola Card. This is not cheap either. There is no student fare. The child-teen fare for 11 and 14-year-olds is identical to the adult one. For 48 hours I spent for myself and my 2 daughters: 54 euros. Huge problem... I lost my card on the first of the three vehicles needed from my hotel to go to the airport. I am on my way to the Hola card office in Placa Catalunya and it is not possible to reprint your card. Obviously I looked for a solution with the operator who told me verbatim: "If you lose a T-shirt they don't give it back to you" and I said to her "Sure! Too bad that this is the online purchase of a service that lasts 48 hours!" Absurd!!!! I had to buy another ticket: 2.90 is the cost of a single ticket. The technology exists... it would have been enough to invalidate the previous code and reprint! Really disappointing!

It’s easy to redeem the voucher at BCN. I saw tourists tried to redeem at those automated kiosk and they seemed to have trouble. Be careful about the actual paper card with the magnetic strip. It is easily scratched, crumpled and tender it non-operative. Mine was not working at my last trip to the cruise terminal and not easy to get help. Tram and metro stations use the card reader only not the “tap”

Great cost effective way to travel barcelona with the family

Can’t recommend as they advertised that it is valid on buses, however, in actuality, you cannot use it on many Buss routes so makes this not as valuable as it would seem ended up having to walk larger distances due to this fact, they should do better if they want to be a tourist, friendly city!

Very valid ticket for visiting Barcelona without stress. The only consideration/annoyance, if purchasing online from Italy, is that upon arriving in Barcelona, you need to go to the metro machines to print the card. Everything else is fine. The price is also great when compared to other tickets. Good for Metro, Bus, airport connections, etc.

Do not use this service as it will leave you running from one machine to the other at stations trying to redeem a voucher that only works for metro. No signs at stations to tell you where to go with this service. Staff at stations also do not know or do not help when you have a voucher from this service. Simply buy your tickets at machines available and forget this or even better use taxis! We have been to all major cities in Europe and used public transport there, so not a novice to any of this,