Hotel Les Arcades - Geneva, Switzerland     

The words that come to mind for this little hotel are "perfectly adequate." The room was kind of shabby and gloomy and looked like it had been furnished circa 1982; the bathroom likewise. But we got a friendly welcome, everything was nice and clean, the cheese, meat, croissants, coffee, etc. served at breakfast were of surprisingly good quality (better, in fact, than the much more expensive hotel we stayed in on our way out of Geneva), and given that our window overlooked the busy street in front of the train station, it wasn't all that noisy. We slept with the window open and the big, room-darkening blind down, and it was dark and quiet enough to counteract our jet-lag-induced insomnia. All we wanted was a good sleep close to the station, so we could check in as soon as we got in from the airport, and head out by train the next day. We were satisfied. And given the insanely high prices of Swiss hotels, Les Arcades proved to be quite a deal as well.

We stayed at this hotel recently and really liked it for several reasons; firstly, it's location immediately opposite the railway station is great (especially since Swiss trains are an easy commute - even for a non-French speaker) and it's 5 to 10 minutes walk to the old part of Geneva across the lake. There are plenty of cheap but good quality restaurants (serving mostly international cuisine - Italian, Chinese etc..) within a 100 meters. We had excellent service whilst we were there - the staff are extremely polite and helpful. Make sure you request for a free travel pass (allows you to travel in any of the Geneva public transport options for free) - our concierge helpfully arranged all of this. We had no problems with getting into the hotel late - turning up at 1am after a long party - the concierge buzzed us in immediately. Finally, it's the best value for money we could find - especially since you have a nice buffet (cold) breakfast included in the reasonable price. We would definitely come back to this hotel.