In autumn 2020, visitors from Switzerland and neighbouring countries were largely able to enjoy the colours of the great outdoors without travel restrictions – be that in the mountains, in the cities, or by car or train on the Grand Tour of Switzerland.

The autumn campaign sought to inspire holidays and excursions with unusual ideas, but also tailored offers and micro-trips. The marketing and communication measures were always based around the blaze of colour that makes the Swiss autumn so spectacular. The programmatically managed digital campaign generated more than 125 million impressions. The landing page MySwitzerland.com/autumn recorded a total of around 450,000 page views lasting over one minute.

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What was the percentage increase in hotel overnight stays by domestic visitors during the autumn months of September and October in 2020 compared with 2019?

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10 % 20 %

There was a year-on-year increase of 17.8% in hotel overnight stays by domestic visitors during autumn 2020. However, the Federal Statistical Office recorded a fall of 30.3% across all markets for the same period as a consequence of the pandemic.

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16 ideas for micro-trips

Working in conjunction with the six partner regions – Ticino, Valais, Eastern Switzerland, Jura, Aargau-Solothurn and Glarnerland – and the Voralpen-Express, ST’s travel experts put together 16 very different micro-trips on the MySwitzerland.com/autumntips subpage. The three-day itineraries each contain suggestions for three daytime activities (walks, cycle routes, etc.) and matching hotel and restaurant recommendations.

New foliage map

Switzerland Tourism ST joined forces with SRF Meteo to develop Switzerland’s first nationwide map for forecasting autumn colours: the foliage map. Visitors are able to use an interactive map to view the current status of the autumn colours and choose the best time to visit the most beautiful spots. However, the landing page Myswitzerland.com/foliagemap also linked to the 16 micro-trips and provided a lot of information about the four most important species of tree in Switzerland: the larch, birch, maple and beech. The site attracted coverage in the Swiss and international media, for instance in Süddeutsche Zeitung, Travelnews, Radio Top and reisen-magazin.at.

Visitors are able to use an interactive map to view the current status of the autumn colours.

Tidy-up artist and cabaret performer Ursus Wehrli helped restore order to autumn

Autumn, with its colourful, wildly scattered foliage, is probably the untidiest season in Switzerland – and therefore the perfect challenge for Swiss cabaret artist and neat freak Ursus Wehrli. In a one-day performance art event, he “tidied up” autumn at Zurich’s Rieterpark, transforming a mound of leaves into an installation measuring about ten square metres. This took place shortly before the peak of the autumn colours, and the Swiss daily newspaper Blick was on hand to record events. The witty ST video “Art of Leaves” showing how Wehrli went about his task was also used on social media for the worldwide marketing of autumn in Switzerland. The video had notched up nearly a million views on YouTube alone by the end of November 2020.

The second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic then hit Switzerland from the middle of October 2020. This not only reduced people’s appetite for travel, but also led to tougher travel restrictions, with especially negative consequences for demand from abroad.

Facts and figures
Autumn campaign   2020 2019
Budget CHF million 6,3* 3.7
Share of total budget % 7,6 4.6
Target markets   CH,DE,IT CH, DE, IT
Page views of MySwitzerland.com**   1,4 Mio 391,422
Top advertising and marketing contacts million 95 152
Media contacts (readers, viewers, listeners) million 801 868
Participants in ST press trips   74 85
Top media articles influenced   362 270
*Including recovery funds.

**Only views of pages with specific autumn campaign content are counted.