SITUATION
Switzerland Tourism and Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) have a shared objective of driving traffic to Switzerland and increasing overnight stays to benefit the Swiss tourism economy. Increasingly, SWISS has had to deal with increasing competition in the Australian market from Asian as well as Middle Eastern carriers.
In partnership with Switzerland Tourism and the Switzerland Travel Centre, we launched a cooperative campaign in 2019 to drive SWISS ticket sales and overnight stays in Switzerland through the Swiss Stopover Program.
ACTION
In conjunction with our partners we ran a multi-faceted marketing campaign targeted to the travel trade with the objective of driving sales of SWISS tickets and overnight stays in Switzerland. Using paid print media, owned assets (including a microsite developed for the campaign) and earned channels like our joint EDM databases, we promoted an exclusive agent promotional offer to the Australian travel agent community.
In total we leveraged a combined 16 media assets across print and digital including Travel Daily banners, Consolidated Travel fare search advertising and 14 unpaid channels including our targeted SWISS EDM newsletter and eXperts database. With a tight budget and even tighter timelines, our campaign reach was 894,100 with a cost per consultant of $0.16; well below our average costs for a campaign of this nature.
RESULTS/OUTCOME
Our Switzerland Stopover campaign was very successful with Switzerland Tourism reporting an increase in overall stopover stays in the six months following our promotional period. We were also pleased to report an 18.5% increase in market share for SWISS coupled with a 148% growth in ticket sales.