While the dollar has clawed back ground against the euro and the pound this year, a handful of destinations have barely budged, and one hasn’t budged at all. Here’s where a summer trip will cost considerably more than the headlines about a stronger dollar might suggest.
Switzerland is the cleanest case of a currency that simply refuses to play along. One US dollar currently buys around 0.81 Swiss francs, which means it now takes roughly $1.23 to buy a single franc, a level that has barely moved even as the dollar has rallied elsewhere. The Swiss franc was one of the best-performing major currencies of 2025, and unlike the bounce-back stories in the eurozone or the UK, it hasn’t given much of that strength back.
The Swiss National Bank has held its policy rate at zero for four straight meetings, and with inflation running close to nothing, there’s no domestic price rise to offset the currency’s strength, the dollar simply buys less, full stop. A dinner in Zurich, a night in the Alps, a coffee in Geneva: all of it costs what it costs, with none of the cushioning a weaker local currency might otherwise provide.
The reason this matters more this year than most is the contrast with the rest of Europe. The euro and the pound have both eased back from their 2025 highs against the dollar as the Federal Reserve held rates rather than cutting them, which means a trip to Paris or London is meaningfully better value than it was twelve months ago. Switzerland sits entirely outside that pattern. Its currency is pegged to nothing and beholden to no one’s rate-cut expectations, and travellers who assume “Europe is having a good year for Americans” will find Swiss prices haven’t read the memo.
Scandinavia tells a quieter version of the same story. The Norwegian krone and Swedish krona have both held up reasonably well against the dollar, and neither has the dramatic strength of the franc, but both economies carry the kind of high baseline costs, restaurants, accommodation, transport, that make even a “fair” exchange rate feel expensive in practice.
A traveller converting dollars in Oslo or Stockholm isn’t being punished by the currency the way they would be in Zurich, but they’re not getting any help from it either, and the region’s prices were never built around forgiving exchange rates to begin with.
The instructive comparison is what’s happening in Japan, which sits at the opposite extreme. The yen remains historically weak and Japanese inflation has stayed low enough that the discount is real, not erased by rising local prices. Switzerland inverts that logic entirely: a strong currency paired with inflation so low it does nothing to dilute the cost.
The practical takeaway for anyone weighing a summer itinerary isn’t to avoid these destinations, Zurich’s old town and the fjords of Norway reward the visit regardless of what’s in the wallet, but to budget for them honestly rather than assuming this year’s broader dollar recovery extends everywhere. In Switzerland specifically, it emphatically does not.
Amanda O’Brien is the creator and editor of The Boutique Adventurer. She has visited 80 countries and is a member of the British Guild of Travel Writers as well as the IFTWTA. She is passionate about wine had has just completed Level 3 of the WSET. Born in Australia, she lives in London.