Basic Steps to Help Save Money when Visiting Geneva

Geneva is a very beautiful city and it regularly attracts large numbers of visitors.

It’s perfectly possible to wax lyrical about its many attractions but few would claim that Switzerland is one of the cheapest countries in Europe to visit. Many visitors are, naturally, operating on a limited budget and they’re also therefore keen to identify ways they can cut costs.

Here are a few tips that you may find useful:

• Look for consolidated tourism tickets. For example, if you love art and museums, then search out what’s called the “Museum Passport”. It offers good discounts based upon visits to several different museums.

• Economic rail travel can be found through deals with SBB/CFF.
• Budget dining is possible through “Allons Manger!” This is a French site offering discount vouchers for restaurants and some Geneva restaurants join in too.

• Switzerland is famous for its leisure, and sites such as “Groupon” as well as “Deindeal” make available some good discounts.

• “Geneve Roule” is a good site for hiring bikes. They’re modestly priced, green and healthy!

• REKA is an interesting site for budget hotels and cheap holiday deals. Accommodation in Switzerland isn’t the cheapest in Europe, so think ahead and look for special deals advertised through the “Swiss Hotel Portal”. If you can, be flexible on your travel dates too. That helps find those special offers hotels are proposing in order to fill rooms during their quieter periods.

• Check out the local bric-a-brac and antique stores. Geneva is famous for them and there are some surprising bargains to be found. Granted, they’re not there every single day and there is some ‘tat’ to wade through but even so, you’ll be able to find good quality items and at a fraction of the new retail cost - if you’re patient.

• Swiss supermarkets often discount their food after 5pm in the evening and Saturday afternoons – that’s usually to clear stocks and short shelf-life items. You can save substantial sums if you shop then. If you’re staying any length of time, look also for the loyalty card schemes.

• Dine out at lunch as opposed to the evenings. Geneva has been very influenced by French culture over time and therefore special lunchtime deals are very popular and often offer huge savings over evening time set menus and particularly ‘à la carte’.

• Buy things in France! Geneva actually sits partly in French territory and some things in France, notably supermarkets, clothing and perhaps day-to-day household goods, will all typically be cheaper there. There is a theoretical 300 Swiss Franc limit to how much you can bring back over into Switzerland but it’s worth looking into.

Getting to Geneva

Numerous scheduled and some budget airlines fly into Geneva. Airport transfers into the city centre are frequent and reasonably priced. However, you can also reach the city by train, and there are good road connections to other parts of Europe.