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Why You May No Longer Be Able to Get a Taxi at Geneva Airport

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Photo: © Worldradio.ch

Please note: this story was originally published on November 25, 2013. We will continue to report new information as the situation continues to develop.

Jump to: Update 1: November 26 2013 | Update 2: December 12 2013

 
Thousands of British skiers face chaotic journeys to the French Alps after New Year because of a sudden new Swiss ban on all foreign minibuses and taxis at Geneva Airport.

On a busy winter Saturday up to 500 licensed French-based minibuses and taxis – the majority of them run by British companies operating legally from French ski resorts – cram into the Swiss side of Geneva airport to ferry skiers to resorts from Chamonix to Val d’Isere.

Unless commonsense prevails in the run-up to Christmas, these drivers face arrest from New Year’s Day onwards, the impounding of their vehicles and their passengers being stranded.

“It’s a pretty daunting prospect,” said Simon Byrne of Mountain Express, which normally does around 60 pick-ups on the average Saturday.

“The root cause is the belief by Swiss–based transfer companies that French-based companies are taking the business that they feel is theirs. The reality is that they can’t begin to cope or compete with the volume of transfers from Geneva to the French Alps.”

Swiss taxi drivers have been vigorously protesting for some time at the lucrative cross-frontier trade, and earlier this year the Canton of Geneva brought in a rule that each foreign taxi or minibus would have to pay a fee of CHF400 per year. Most of the big operators accepted this, but a consortium of French firms took the Swiss to court and won on the grounds that this was a breach of free trade.

Taxis at Geneva | Welove2ski
Photo: © Robert S. Donovan/Flickr Creative Commons.

The Swiss retaliated with a raft of health and safety regulations loosely based around a previously inactive EC directive. Instead of CHF400 per car they are asking for CHF90 per taxi driver rather than per vehicle. Importantly, each minibus driver has to produce a personal certificate of qualification. The problem is that in France such a certificate simply doesn’t exist. What is more, the Swiss gave the British and French taxi companies in France just a fortnight in which to comply.

The dispute has now reached the ministry of transport in Paris, which is arguing directly with their Swiss counterpart. If no solution can be found, a consortium of British and French taxi drivers is expected to apply for an injunction before the end-of-year deadline.

If this cannot be achieved they are threatening to boycott Switzerland altogether and try to pick up their fares from the French side of Geneva airport. However, this area is so small that the arrival of 500 minibuses is liable to bring the entire airport to a halt. The new rule also applies to those British tour operators that already have licenses to run their own minibuses.

Ironically, the new law allows minibus companies to cross the Swiss frontier from France and drop their passengers at the airport. But once a new passenger boards the vehicle the driver would be liable to arrest.

Representatives from transfer companies have meetings scheduled with the Swiss authorities this and next week, in which they’re confident a compromise will be reached. So if you are planning on taking any form of taxi or minibus transfer from Geneva Airport this winter, watch this space.
 


Update 1: November 26 2013

On November 26 Senior Manager, Chargé de Missions, at Geneva Airport, Jean Luc Portier, said: “Buses from any ski resorts will be able to come to the Swiss side of the airport. There is no question about the airport not letting them do it.”

However, as we understand the situation at the moment, the problem would lie with the police and not the airport authorities who are sympathetic to the situation and working hard to resolve it.

At present – until some agreement is reached with the Canton – it seems that the only people who have the required ceritificate of competence for the license are the actual owners/managers of transport companies and taxi firms, but not their drivers. (As a result, if the new regulations come into force, company owners will still be able to operate their taxis from Geneva airport, providing they do the driving, and provided they are granted one of the new licenses.)

Opinion amongst taxi and transfer firms is divided as to whether the issue will be resolved quickly. As you’ll see from the comments below, many in the business are adamant it will be. Others are not so sure. One owner of a medium-sized taxi firm in the French Alps told me, “This is a very large mess and is going to seriously affect the ski tourism industry this winter. I just hope that “bad” publicity will at least help make the people directly affected in Switzerland (Airport and airlines) sit up and take notice and maybe have some influence on the situation.”

Hopefully an agreement will be reached before the January 1 deadline.
 


Update 2: December 12 2013

Good news! The Swiss authorities have bowed to pressure from French and British transport companies and extended the deadline for the new licences until January 30. However little more than half the estimated 1600 drivers have so far applied for registration because it remains unclear what qualification documentation is required. At the last count, only 68 licences had been issued.

While the immediate threat over New Year is lifted, the Swiss are still insisting that any taxi or minibus driver trying to pick up passengers risks criminal proceedings from February 1 unless he has registered within the time limit.

Enjoy Peter’s rants? Check Why February Half Term May Be Hellish, Is the Swiss Chalet Holiday Over? Is This the End of Ski Hosting in France? and Are the Happy Days of Ski Hosting Over in France?

About the author

Peter Hardy

An editor at Welove2ski, Peter is also writes about skiing for The Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail. He first put on skis as a child on a family holiday, and has since been to some 500 resorts around the world.

20 Comments

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  • Dear All,

    Minibuses from any ski resorts will be able to come to the Swiss side of the airport. There is no question about the airport not leting them do it.

    • Hi Jean Luc, as from January 1, under the rules being brought in, drivers of minibuses will have to have this special licence before they can pick up at the airport. This is how things stand at present.

      • Dear Peter.
        Many of us in the ski industry appreciate your work. However in a rush to get a ‘good angle’ the result here is scaremongering and does not help the industry one bit. Please pay attention to Jean Luc’s comments. He may just know considerably more about this situation than you. As he says
        “There is no question about the airport not leting them do it”.

  • your information is incorrect, yes there are some problems, but the French authorities are working hard to overcome these. There is much more information you need to know before you publish articles like this – you don’t know the full story.

    • Hi Lou, this is the situation as we understand it at present. As we have said, the French Ministry of Transport is talking to its opposite number in Switzerland, trying to resolve the situation before the deadline.

  • Peter, you do realise Jean Luc Portier is the Head of Airport Steering at Geneva airport? So I think it is fair to say he has more information than you do on this issue!

    Whilst I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you wrote this article with the best intentions, you might want to take a bit more care in your writing about this sort of thing – the title of your article is needlessly inflammatory and there is clearly a lot more going on behind the scenes than you know about. Perhaps it would have been better to wait until you had a good grasp of the issues and all the facts before you published.

    • Hey, don’t shoot the messenger Charlouje! If the Mont Blanc Tunnel was closed – or come to that, Geneva Airport – are you suggesting that we should keep quiet and not tell skiers the situation?

      Let me make it absolutely clear that in our view this is blatant protectionism by the Swiss just as is the ESF stance over ski hosting by the the French. We support the transport and taxi companies and hope that in highlighting the situation we and others can bring some pressure to bear to resolve the dispute as quickly as possible. At the same time it is our duty to warn skiers of the current situation. Isn’t that what having a free press is all about?

  • We’ve had quite a few similar events over the years at Geneva airport, and although new regulations at time seem blocking & daunting, in the past everyone’s managed to come to a decent solution so that people still get to their holidays ok. I’d say it’ll be the same this time.

    Always does seem a bit daunting though beforehand waiting to see how it’s going to play out. As a tour operator it’s a lot of whispers coming through and it can be hard to know what the rules are and what we need to do.

    Generally I’ve found it’s communication issues that are the main worry, though to be fair to Geneva airport there must be 1000+ companies that use their airport so it’s got to be a challenge to communicate with them all.

    Phil from The Chalet Experience

    • I hope you’re right about a swift resolution, Phil. But not everyone is optimistic. One owner of a medium-sized taxi firm in the French Alps told me, “This is a very large mess and is going to seriously affect the ski tourism industry this winter. I just hope that “bad” publicity will at least help make the people directly affected in Switzerland (Airport and airlines) sit up and take notice and maybe have some influence on the situation.”

  • As if they are going to stop 500 private minibuses on a Saturday. easyJet, Swiss and the Airport authorities are really going to stand for that and all the bad publicity.

    This is scaremongering.

    Pure co-incidence that you write an article damaging Geneva Airport while at almost exactly the same time fellow welovetoski contributor Patrick Thorne writes a report on the joys of using Lyon Airport?

    https://www.inthesnow.com/feature/lyon-saint-exupery-airport-is-the-natural-gateway-to-the-alps/

    • Yes, you are right Peter: a solution has to be found before the deadline, otherwise there would be chaos at the airport. Obviously not all 500 minibuses are likely to be turned away – quite a number will be driven by owner drivers who have the correct documents. It’s also worth bearing in mind that only a tiny proportion of skiers arriving at the airport are reliant on taxi and minibus transfers – the vast majority make the transfers by tour operator and other licenced coaches.

      Your insinuation that we are involved in some kind of conspiracy to promote Lyon Airport is too ridiculous for comment! We are simply reporting the situation as it is at present.

    • Hi Peter, it’s very nice to be noticed and I’m always up for a good conspiracy theory but alas this is pure coincidence yes. Without wishing to sound too sycophantic I’m grateful and honoured to do work for WeLove2Ski, but I’ve been asked to write one feature in the 6 or 7 years the site has been going and that because of my local knowledge of Scottish ski areas, so ‘one-off-contributor’ is more accurate. I have zero direct involvement in the site. The Lyon airport piece for totally separate publication In The Snow, which I edit, was written six weeks back and is completely unconnected. So it’s a brilliant theory, but sadly flawed, and I’m also not quite sure what the motivation of WL2S would be in ‘doing down’ Geneva in any case, let alone promoting Lyon? I thought the idea of any news publication was just to try to get the facts out there when a news story came up? PS. You don’t need to fly to Geneva if you ski in Scotland …that’s my REAL secret agenda, just a shame there’s no snow up her at the moment 🙁

  • Sorry if I was inflammatory with my comments and you deleted them.

    Your headline is though.

    As if you won’t be able to get a taxi from the airport? Rubbish.

    Articles like this get copied – even here it links to WON’T be able to get a taxi

    Top story: Why You Won’t Be Able to Get a Taxi at Geneva This Winter | Welove2s… https://t.co/3Qyzk72euG, see more https://t.co/NJkZiaWIgw

    You obviously changed won’t to may not but search engines don’t pick that up – and it still is NOT TRUE. I guarantee I will be able to get a taxi – a Swiss one perhaps? Ever thought of that?

    Alpine Elements report is as Taxi Wars and then name this article as a source plus a link to Le Matin from November 2012!!!!
    https://www.alpineelements.co.uk/community/taxi-wars-to-strangle-geneva-airport/

    Irresponsible “journalism” – I think the man who runs the airport may just be slightly better informed than you.

    If you grew some you would print all comments and change the headline – but then you don’t get social media – this is not teletext….

    Pure co-incidence that you write an article damaging Geneva Airport while at almost exactly the same time fellow welovetoski contributor Patrick Thorne writes a totally over the top gushing report (advertorial really) on the joys of using Lyon Airport ?

    https://www.inthesnow.com/feature/lyon-saint-exupery-airport-is-the-natural-gateway-to-the-alps/

    When was the last time you paid 100% for a ski holiday ? And then say you are only reporting what is out there…. The messenger needs shooting 🙂

    • We’ve never suggested that you won’t be able to get a taxi at Geneva airport: you can of course get a taxi driven by someone who has the correct documents (eg a French-based owner driver with a transport licence). You can of course also catch a Swiss cab…for four times the price.

  • Informed and reasonable, polite discussion is normally the way forward. Personal attacks and an I can spit further than you attitude won’t help anyone. Whilst it is true to say that the Swiss have the right to implement legally implemented legislation they should be encouraged not to do so in a high handed manner. It would be worth noting that the French authorities are allowing up to the end of 2014 for already operating transfer companies to normalise their affairs, in line with European directives, whereas the Swiss, having signed various free trade and free movement of professions and person treaties, have decided to stringently implement these directives and are demanding attestations from the French authorities, currently not provided for, to be produced. Yet it is only being implemented at Geneva – other Swiss airports remain unaffected. One can only wonder if this action is fuelled by a fit of pique at having been pulled up over the policy of recent years.
    It is not helpful to shoot the messenger, and while I appreciate that this situation casts a negative shadow over attitudes to holidays in the region, we have to hope that the groundswell of opinion of prospective clients of Geneva Airport will only aide Cantonal government to see the sense of the argument in allowing a more reasonable timeframe for the implementation of the rules.