I am touring the Alsace/Switzerland at the same time as Baselworld is being held so have bought a ticket to visit but as a complete novice would welcome any advice or recommendations.I am not staying in Basel but will be driving in as the Hotel prices are silly.
As I understand it, unless you have appointments with brands, you're not allowed into their booths/spaces...
Yup. Tourists get to walk around and look through the glass windows of the big brands. The smaller brands, however, are more hands on to the little people. The last years I managed to catch Jorg Shauer of Stowa at his booth (not there this year I beleive), for example, and Sinn has everything you can try on, no appointments needed : they actually pulled me in and treated me like a king for an hour. Some practical tips : Wear good walking shoes, its huge (even though they say this year will be smaller). And the best thing I did last year (due to the years before) was : 1) pack a big flask of good tea 2) and some sandwiches 3) in my rucksack...so that in between being saturated with watches I could go somewhere quite and eat something decent and have a good cuppa and start all over again. The food options are not great, and $$$ for what you get.
Apparently the scaling down is a result of them kicking out a lot of jewellery brands, and pats/component/tool suppliers... so might not have such an effect on folks going to see the watch brands. Will be interesting to see what folks think once they can compare year on year.
I have always skipped those, but still don't believe I saw all the watch brands in a day last year, despite tea and sandwiches...or maybe I did, but had the overwhelming feeling of being 'lost'