Anybody hired a car from the FRENCH side at Geneva airport?

[Globalti]

It's cheaper to hire from the French side even with the additional £22 for the Swiss motorways vignette that you have to buy.

However at the end of the holiday you have to find your way back to the French side of the airport to drop off your hire car. Anybody done this before? Is it easy?

 

[Tim Bennet.]

Lots of times and we didn't have to buy a vignette. They gave us a map of how to get back to the airport without using the Swiss motorways.

 

[Noodley]

Anybody done this before? Is it easy?

Yes, the 2 most stressful parts of the holiday were going from and to the French side.

 

[Globalti]

Yes, I've just found the official airport map showing the roundabout route, which avoids Swiss territory. It looks like a nightmare, especially at commuting time with a flight to catch. It's got to be 50-60 kms extra over the autoroute or just driving straight through Geneva. Hiring a Swiss car (presumably already with vignette) is £35 extra, I reckon that's money well spent. If we have the choice of not buying a vignette, we don't really need to because we're going straight through town to take the D road out to Sallanches. This will avoid the Autoroute tolls as well.

 

[LLB]

I was there in the summer and can say with confidence that the best way is to hire from the airport. Outside rush hour, Annemasse is a 20-25 minute drive from the airport, by SBB train from the airport to Geneva central, tram to Moellesulaz, and then bus to Annemasse is about 1 1/2 hours not including hanging around for them.

I rented from Avis at the airport and they gave me a free upgrade to a Bravo T-Jet (1.4 turbo, 150bhp jobby) which was as good a deal as I could secure at the time in comparison to all the other hire companies in the airport (10:30pm on friday evening) for about £130 for the weekend IIRC

Fill up in Genevaa as well as it is much cheaper than the french side.