INSIDER VIEW: Is Geneva at breaking point?

In just over a fortnight the watch world will embark on its annual pilgrimage to Geneva.

Anchored by the biggest and most important watch trade fair on the planet — Watches & Wonders — in recent years the city has been overtaken by literally hundreds of other watch companies, exhibiting at shows like Time to Watches and Chronopolis, or in hotels like Beau-Rivage.

In many ways, this growth is a triumphant sign of strength for a watch industry that briefly felt a bit homeless after the demise of Baselworld. 

And it’s Baselworld that got me thinking the other day. I remember with fondness the hectic and relentless nature of the days walking the exhibition halls, the liquid dinners in the evening, and the camaraderie among fellow industry folk, as we were all going through the same thing.

But it’s also recent enough in my memory that I remember the reasons that led to its decline.

The visitor experience was, by and large, dreadful. Large swathes of the city were, at best, unattractive. Price gouging wasn’t even sly — restaurants and bars would openly put crude white stickers over their usual menu, and write in pen the ‘special’ Baselworld prices, which often represented a 400% hike.

The standard and cost of accommodation was scandalous. The nadir for me came when I was staying at an Airbnb apartment with a former colleague, and we were told by the host — who seemed to genuinely not understand the problem with it — that the only bathroom was down the corridor of the apartment block (which we’d also been told was condemned and would be razed to the ground in a matter of weeks, incidentally).

As if that wasn’t bad enough, that bathroom only had a toilet and a sink. If we wanted the luxury of a bath or shower, we’d have to go down three floors to the basement. When we got there, words escaped us. It was a real life horror show. The lone and exposed bath tub was surrounded by exposed pipes, debris, discarded MDF, plasterboard, and hanging wires. The shower head was missing from the limp hose that flopped over the edge of the tub.

We checked out and found somewhere else almost immediately. We weren’t precious, but this was beyond the pale. And the price wasn’t cheap — the condemned one-bed apartment had cost us about CHF 300 per night!

And, finally, the Baselworld organisers had become detached from reality and from free market forces. They raised their prices higher and higher, while simultaneously delivering a worse and worse experience for exhibitors, and visitors alike. Its eventual implosion became somewhat inevitable, despite it having been unthinkable just a few years before.

Geneva doesn’t suffer from all of the same problems. For a start, the main show — Watches & Wonders — is brilliantly run still. It has dealt with the expansion from its Richemont-centric SIHH roots to the all-singing, all-dancing behemoth that it is today admirably well. Visitors still feel well looked after, and brands, on the whole, still feel that they’re getting a return on their significant investment. 

Similar could be said, in isolation, of Time to Watches or the Beau-Rivage hotel, to name two of the other main players in town.

But the bigger picture looks a bit more iffy, and a lot more Baselworld-like. Geneva wasn’t, and isn’t, designed to accommodate 60,000 visitors descending on it all at once. You see that in the hotel prices, which are truly eye-watering. 

The visitor experience across the city in general — other than some nice areas around Lake Geneva itself — is not what you’d get in Paris or London or New York, to name just a few. Too many establishments charge Monte Carlo prices for Monty Python levels of luxury.

Why does this matter? Because businesses — whether it’s retailers, distributors, press, or exhibiting brands themselves — have to justify their spend. If a whole week is prohibitively expensive, some will only come for a couple of nights. If bringing the whole team becomes a financial no-no, then only one or two will attend. And this diminishes the value of the whole thing. Fewer eyeballs for less time.

On paper, I’d love to see Geneva continue to thrive and grow, and I’m not in denial of the fact that, right now, it is a phenomenon and a real jamboree that the watch industry can be proud of. But I’m seeing the early signs of the city itself creaking under the pressure of the sheer volume of people. 

If the market corrects itself and this volume of visitors shrinks a little (due to the aforementioned costs), then it could be the beginning of ‘Geneva Watch Week’ going full circle and becoming largely just the Watches & Wonders show, as this at least is still at the top of its game and manageable for the city, numbers-wise.