About Geneva Tourism Guide

Geneva has a reputation problem. It turns up on lists of the world’s most expensive cities, it is full of banks and diplomats, and a startling number of travel articles quietly imply you should skip it and go to Zurich or Lausanne instead. We started this guide because that verdict is lazy, and because the practical questions people actually have about Geneva — will a coffee really cost eight francs, is the Old Town worth a day, can I sleep in France and commute in — were being answered badly or not at all.

01 — What this guide covers.

Everything a visitor needs between deciding to come and getting home: what to do, where to stay, what to eat, how to move around, and which day trips out of the city are worth the train fare. There are currently more than 140 guides here, organised into fourteen sections — things to do, neighbourhoods, food, museums, transport, budget, the outdoors, shopping, events, family travel, history, and planning.

Two subjects get more space here than they do elsewhere, because they are where visitors lose the most money and time.

The first is cost. Geneva is genuinely expensive, and there is no honest way to write around that. What we can do is be specific about where the money goes and where it does not have to: the Geneva Transport Card that every hotel and hostel guest gets free, the ticket machine in the baggage hall at the airport that dispenses a free 80-minute public transport ticket, the free bikes from Genève Roule in summer, the museums that charge nothing for their permanent collections, and the Bains des Paquis, where a few francs buys you the best view in the city and a pot of fondue in winter.

The second is the border. Geneva is wrapped almost entirely in France, and this shapes a trip more than any guidebook admits. The airport has a French sector. Hotels in Ferney-Voltaire and Annemasse can cost half what the same room costs across the canton line. The Léman Express makes commuting in from France routine. Chamonix, Annecy and Évian are all day trips into another country, with the customs allowances and roaming charges that implies. We treat that as core information rather than a footnote.

02 — How the research works.

Every guide starts from primary sources: the transport operators themselves for fares and timetables, the museums and attractions for opening hours and admission, the city and cantonal authorities for anything about regulations, closures or public space. Where a claim comes from somewhere else, we go and check it at the source before repeating it.

Prices are quoted in Swiss francs, because quoting Geneva in euros or dollars produces numbers that are wrong within a month. Opening hours and fares are the fastest-rotting facts in travel writing, so anything time-sensitive is written to be checked, and we revise pages when things change rather than leaving a 2024 fare sitting on the page in 2026.

We are also willing to say when something is not worth it. A guide that recommends everything is useless, and Geneva has more than its share of attractions that are fine but not worth an afternoon of a four-day trip.

03 — Who writes this, and how it is paid for.

Geneva Tourism Guide is a small independent publication. It is not run by Geneva Tourisme, by the City or Canton of Geneva, by any hotel group, or by any tourist board, and it has no commercial relationship with any business named on the site.

Nobody pays to be recommended here, and there is no sponsored placement. The site is funded by display advertising, which is kept visually separate from the editorial and has no influence on what gets covered or how it is rated. If that ever changes — an affiliate arrangement, a paid partnership — it will be disclosed on the page it affects, not buried here.

04 — When we get it wrong.

Sometimes we will. A restaurant closes, a fare rises, a museum reorganises its Monday hours, or we simply make a mistake. Corrections are the most useful mail we get and they go to the front of the queue. If something on this site is out of date or wrong, please tell us — a link to the page in question is all we need to get started.