General Swiss Info

SWITZERLAND GENERAL INFORMATION

Get inspired, welcome to Switzerland!

It is now time for a little colourful journey through Switzerland and its seasons: winter, spring, summer, and autumn, all offer amazing and unforgettable experiences to every visitor.

Why Switzerland?

This is the most important question that your clients will ask you after you suggest Switzerland as the destination for their holiday. Therefore, you need to have a simple but convincing answer ready for them. Give your clients inspiration, ideas, and convincing reasons to fall #inLOVEwithSWITZERLAND!

Switzerland is travellers’ heaven

Switzerland is the perfect destination as it offers a great variety of landscapes, languages, cultures, lifestyles, and recreational activities all in a small area.

Everything is perfectly organised, from the transportation system to accommodations and attractions.

This combination of diverse experiences and impeccable services is the main strength of Switzerland as a tourist destination.

How to explore Switzerland’s diversity in one go? We have the perfect solution for your clients: the Grand Tour of Switzerland.

Switzerland is a small country with a perfect location

Switzerland is compact: no place is more than 75 km (46.6 miles) away from the closest border and 15 of the 26 cantons neighbour other countries. This makes travelling around Switzerland easy, convenient, and fast, as everything is at the visitors’ fingertips: in a few hours of comfortable travel, your clients can go from the silence of an alpine valley to the vibrant life of a modern city like Zurich.

It is also easy to reach, as it is located in the heart of Europe with numerous flights from all over the world to Zurich and Geneva and access to the European high-speed rail network.

Swiss facts: geography, economy and population

Switzerland has 26 cantons, which are the federal states of the Swiss confederation. They vary greatly in size, population and character: the canton of Geneva comprises just one city; the canton of Uri is entirely mountains and valleys; the population of the Zurich canton is over one million while the people of Appenzell Inner-Rhodes would fit into a football stadium.

Switzerland’s economy is based on highly skilled workers, in specialist areas such as microtechnology, hi-tech, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, as well as banking and insurance. Switzerland is widely recognised as an international research centre, with the private and public sector strongly promoting science and technology.

Location and geography

Switzerland is a relatively small country, situated in the centre of Europe. Its neighbouring countries are Germany in the north, Austria and Liechtenstein in the east, Italy in the south, and France in the west.

Switzerland offers a large variety of landscapes, ranging from mountains, to farmland, glaciers, and valleys. There are three main geographic regions:

• the Alps, which cover around 60% of the country’s total surface area. Only 11% of the population lives in this area;

• the Swiss Plateau (30%), which is the area from Lake Geneva in the southwest of Switzerland to Lake Constance in the northeast. Two-thirds of the total population live in this area, where most of Switzerland’s main towns, cities and industrial centre are located. The Plateau is a hilly area, with several large lakes and rivers;

• the Jura (10%), which is located in the northern part of the Swiss Plateau. The landscape of the area is varied, presenting hilly regions, valleys, plateaus and peaks.

Switzerland does not use the euro as its currency. Rather, Switzerland uses the Swiss franc (CHF). In June 2016, one Swiss franc was worth around EUR 0.92/USD 1.02/GBP 0.76.

Switzerland has a population of 8.3 million; about 5 million of them live in the Swiss Plateau in between the Jura Mountains and the Swiss Alps. All the larger Swiss cities lie on the plateau, including the city of Zurich, which is Switzerland’s largest with a population of 376,990. The canton (federal state) of Zurich is the most densely populated canton in Switzerland, with 1,242,000 inhabitants in total. Regarding family life, on average women in Switzerland have 1.54 children.

Most people in Switzerland are Christian, including 42 percent Roman Catholic and 35 percent Protestant, with 11 percent stating no religious affiliation at all.

The Swiss are an educated population; in 2015, 88 percent of adults aged 25–64 had the equivalent of a high school diploma. The Swiss government forecasts the number of people aged 25–64 with post-secondary education will rise to almost 60 percent in 2040, although foreigners are expected to contribute some 30 percent of the increase.