Geneva Motor Show

H8GHOTI

Trying to plan a trip over to it next month. Anyone been?
How long would you need to walk around the hall?
I'm thinking of flying over on Fri/Sat evening. Going to the show the following morning and fly home that evening. I'd like to only stay one night in a hotel, if possible, but I don't want to be rushing either.
Any other advice (about the show or Geneva itself) welcome.

corglass

H8GHOTI wrote: »

Trying to plan a trip over to it next month. Anyone been?
How long would you need to walk around the hall?
I'm thinking of flying over on Fri/Sat evening. Going to the show the following morning and fly home that evening. I'd like to only stay one night in a hotel, if possible, but I don't want to be rushing either.
Any other advice (about the show or Geneva itself) welcome.

Hey H8GHOTI,

I was there in 2005. Real last minute decision to go. (i.e. Decided to go a Tuesday night, and flying out Thursday morning!) Went with a few friends. Couple of things that are crucial to note:

- Geneva is super cold, so dress warm. It was -15 C when we arrived (in t-shirts!):)

- It's also super expensive, so bring plenty of dosh, I really do mean super expensive. (Don't let that put you off, it's a great experience)

- Buy tickets for the tram if you go. If you chance going without one you'll get busted. I saw loads of people having to stump up fines!

- Pre-book accommodation. I'll say that again, PRE BOOK ACCOMMODATION> We didn't, and ended up sitting in the lobby of a hostel while the manager cleared a room for us. If the hostel was full we were goosed!

- OK the show. As far as I remember, it's day ticks only. There were no 3 day tickets or similar for sale. The show itself is amazing. I was there in pre-crash times so it as all about who's stand could outshine who's.

Upstairs it full of super-new cars, concept cars etc. New models are revelaed throughout the week.e.g. The new Golf on Monday, the new Defender on Tuesday etc.

In the Basement there were plenty of old classics, like the old Ford F40, Lambo 4X4's etc.

Hope you get the picture!
Be sure to pm me if you do go, I'd love to see how you get on!

JayeL

I went last year, I'd second everything corglass has said.

Geneva is a boring place, little or no nightlife where we stayed (just across from Cornavin train station) and everything is eye-wateringly expensive; you won't complain about "Rip Off Ireland" after paying €12 for grub in McDonalds!

Travel is cheap, everyone leaving the airport can get a free travel ticket which works on all buses, trains and trams for 90 minutes or something and all hotels give you a free travel card for the duration of your stay. As you'd expect, it all runs like clockwork.

The show itself is handy to get to, the PalExpo is pretty much part of the airport, so you walk from the airport train station in the basement up to the entrance. Which is, I kid you not, the guts of a mile away all the same. Buses drop you nearer to the entrance but we didn't look into those.

We got to see all the new cars in about 4-5 hours. If you love Ferrari, be prepared for a scrum. Most stands were easy enough to get up close and sit into cars but some had bouncers who let a few in at a time (Infiniti), others had everything locked up (Jaguar) and some were just invitees only (Bentley).

You can't beat it for sheer variety; explaining Sbarro and Rinspeed to the missus was one thing but where else can you sit into a BYD?

It's unbeatable as a car show for petrolheads; I'm trying to decide whether to go this year though, a day trip would suffice for me but Aer Lingus don't make that possible. But I'm glad I got there once!

H8GHOTI

Thanks for the info.

Geneva does sound expensive alright. All the hotels I've looked at are ~€200 a night and they only look average. But they do include free public transport I suppose :pac:
The flights are a balls too. Only one direct flight in & out of Cork a week. If we take that over & book a one way flight out of Geneva to Heathrow, it's like €400 for just that one flight. A return ticket is about half that. So we might have to take two flights over and two flights back. I'm looking into flying out of Dublin as well but that isn't great either. I'll keep looking. I'm sure it'll be worth it in the end anyway.

I might try and get over there for 4pm/5pm on Saturday, go for a couple of hours that evening. Go again for a few hours Sunday morning before flying home. That should give me enough time to see everything.

Cool_CM

H8GHOTI wrote: »

Thanks for the info.

Geneva does sound expensive alright. All the hotels I've looked at are ~€200 a night and they only look average. But they do include free public transport I suppose :pac:
The flights are a balls too. Only one direct flight in & out of Cork a week. If we take that over & book a one way flight out of Geneva to Heathrow, it's like €400 for just that one flight. A return ticket is about half that. So we might have to take two flights over and two flights back. I'm looking into flying out of Dublin as well but that isn't great either. I'll keep looking. I'm sure it'll be worth it in the end anyway.

I might try and get over there for 4pm/5pm on Saturday, go for a couple of hours that evening. Go again for a few hours Sunday morning before flying home. That should give me enough time to see everything.

If you fly from Dublin, you can fly into Geneva with Aer Lingus or Zürich with Aer Lingus and Swiss. Zürich sounds far away, but is 3 hours from Geneva on the train.

Alternatively you could fly to Lyon travel to Geneva by train.

Switzerland in general is ridiculously expensive, but Geneva is also more or less surrounded by France. It would definitely be cheaper for you to look into staying in a French town nearby!

Hope you manage to get there!

JayeL

One more thing: the Geneva Tourism website has some good accommodation deals for the 10 days of the show, bit.ly/ig2uyK

Tea 1000

Was there last year too. Savage is one word! THere are 5 halls. From hall 2 you could see the Toyota stand at the end of hall 3, so you think "I'll head over there to see the FT86"... and 5 minutes later you're still walking towards it! It's massive! We went there on a Thursday, and didn't get all seen despite being there for around 7 hours, so went back on Saturday for a couple of hours before home and to be honest it was a balls in comparison. Saturday was absolutely black with people. Uncomfortable to move around. I'd advise taking a day off work instead, you might even get cheaper flights mid-week. You could fly in early morning, go straight to the show, stay as long as you want and then go to the hotel, fly home then next morning with no pressure to try to see stuff.

H8GHOTI

I went over on Friday & got back yesterday evening. It really was a great experience. The amount of great cars & the size of the hall is mind boggling.
We flew over Friday morning through Gatwick & got the direct flight home yesterday evening. It worked out about €200, so not too bad.

Thanks to everyone for their advice. The one thing I really would echo is don't go on a Saturday. We went on Friday for around 3 hours and saw loads. It was relatively quiet and it was easy enough to get up close to the cars. Saturday was crazy busy, very uncomfortable. It was difficult to move around the halls & no word of a lie the crowd was 8 deep at the Lamborghini stand. I'm glad I saw everything on Friday.

Here's some pics. The rest are on Flickr, for anyone that's interested.

LAMBORGHINI AVENTADOR


VEYRON GRAND SPORT


RANGE ROVER EVOQUE


NISSAN ESFLOW


MAZDA SHINARI


BMW CONCEPT

Dazza Mc kenna

Some pics at Geneva