Switzerland Tourism

Switzerland Tourism was looking to reposition the country as not just a destination for skiers, but somewhere all types of travellers can enjoy all year round. The goal was to attract new visitors and increase length of stay.

It wanted a content campaign that would highlight Switzerland’s many and varied attractions to an affluent audience of keen travellers, and promote the country as a clean, safe and sustainable travel destination.

Switzerland Tourism came to FT to create this campaign and to connect with our exclusive audience of high-net- worth luxury-seekers. Its targets were challenging, but we knew we could achieve them.

The FT worked with an experienced freelance travel writer to create a compelling content campaign called “Discover Switzerland”, hosted on a bespoke hub on FT.com. The concept behind the campaign was that as people emerge from the difficult times of the pandemic, they need adventure, wellness and a break – and Switzerland can offer it all.

Research
Our audience research showed that discerning FT readers align strongly with the Swiss Tourism Board’s target audience, having both the means and the propensity to spend on unique travel experiences. The average personal net worth of our readers is £1.4 million, 92% of our UK readers are luxury travellers, and 83% of FT readers enjoy going to new destinations.

In addition:

• The FT reaches a projected audience size of over 3.3 million £sterling millionaires across the globe each month
• 94% of FT or How To Spend It online readers have either bought a product or service, or visited a website as a result of reading an article on our site

Content
Five articles showcased Switzerland’s exquisite scenery, cosmopolitan cities, luxury experiences, adventure sports and wellness breaks, while a sixth set out two spectacular itineraries in tempting detail. They were designed to bring the country to life for our readers and excite them about the varied travel possibilities.

Switzerland Tourism wanted the content to be in the FT’s tone of voice rather than its own in order to resonate with our audience. So the tone was luxurious and informative and we built on this with beautifully shot, high-production photography.

Each article had two calls to action, driving traffic to the mySwitzerland.com landing page where readers could make a travel booking.

The campaign not only hit Switzerland Tourism’s content engagement objectives, but also achieved the biggest brand uplift of all FT content campaigns in 2021.

• We generated 28.8k page views, 191% to target

• The average attention time across all content was 55 seconds, 28% over the FT benchmark

• Throughout the series we reached 22.7k users, each reading 1.27 pieces of content on average (showing good engagement)

• We delivered 5.6m impressions across social media and FT.com

• On FT.com, the CTR for all line items significantly outperformed the benchmarks, again showing strong FT audience engagement

• Of the known audience on FT.com, 26% were of the key C-suite demographic