Being big and bold with messaging and thematic campaigns, the Vienna Tourist Board tells a cohesive story about why the city is a global icon.
Communities around the world are increasingly becoming vocal about perceived crowding levels caused by tourism. Yet, with 18 million annual bed nights and double-digit growth, 90% of the Viennese population remains positive of the industry's value. Through bold storytelling as a powerful tool for empowering the transformative nature of travel, the Vienna Tourist Board understands what it means to encourage visitors to explore all corners of a city.
Communities around the world are increasingly becoming vocal about perceived crowding levels caused by tourism. Yet, with 18 million annual bed nights and double-digit growth, 90% of the Viennese population remains positive of the industry's value. Through bold storytelling as a powerful tool for empowering the transformative nature of travel, the Vienna Tourist Board understands what it means to encourage visitors to explore all corners of a city.
Communities around the world are increasingly becoming vocal about perceived crowding levels caused by tourism. Yet, with 18 million annual bed nights and double-digit growth, 90% of the Viennese population remains positive of the industry's value. Through bold storytelling as a powerful tool for empowering the transformative nature of travel, the Vienna Tourist Board understands what it means to encourage visitors to explore all corners of a city. Catharina Riess shares how the DMO strategically uses annual themes to focus its efforts, ensuring that its communication is impactful in positioning the city as a cultural hub.
The Vienna Tourist Board's approach is focused on creating value for the destination by promoting the city to a passionate and culturally curious audience, demonstrating a contemporary mindset against the backdrop of the city's imperial past. This involves being big and bold with messaging, even occasionally playing with the notions of death and despair. By capturing attention, the Vienna Tourist Board tells a cohesive story about why the city is a global icon.
As a well-known destination, the Vienna Tourist Board is able to concentrate its efforts on strategically enhancing the city's positioning. This approach to marketing is also very conscious of destination management and ensuring balanced visitor flows throughout the entire destination. With an ambition to ensure that visitors continue to experience the authentic Vienna, going beyond the typical first layer of experiences at popular attractions, destination marketing is an influential component of the city's positioning and acts as a positive force for changing the way people visit Vienna.
To achieve this, the Vienna Tourist Board relies heavily on journalists and social media influencers to amplify its messages, sharing stories that it could not communicate effectively on its own. This outlook is crucial to creating a significant impact by sharing valuable and informative content with global audiences. By working closely with the media and ambassadors, the DMO aims to extend its reach and credibility, enabling others to communicate about Vienna on its behalf, while keeping the desired message at the centre of all communication. Placing an emphasis on prioritising the quality of the message and the author of a story, this approach recognises the power of third-party endorsement and the value of diverse voices in sharing authentic experiences.
Having an in-house media department empowers the Vienna Tourist Board to centrally manage all content, channels and international media relations. This enables the delivery of a joined-up approach to messaging through effectively coordinating internal and external direction. This team is responsible for deciding on an annual topic to promote globally, often around anniversaries. Positioning each theme with a twist helps place the focus on connecting the city's past with modern-day life. This allows the DMO to control the narrative and select the right aspects to portray. By their very nature, these themes are designed to be diverse and versatile, presenting a truly holistic image of the city. The three most recent campaigns focus on the anniversaries of a historical event and a famous musician, as well as the value of exploring local neighbourhoods:
It is important to recognise that these strategic themes are not a single campaign, but instead focus on building up a narrative throughout the year to build momentum through lots of small activations, rather than a singular moment. This always-on approach allows time for the message to be positioned correctly in the media and is focused on being highly purposeful in considering how the content produced strengthens Vienna's long-term positioning as a lively destination. The concept of transformative travel is central to this strategy, meaning that a visit to Vienna should enable personal growth among visitors and also add to the destination's vibrancy itself. This ensures that all activities are geared towards creating value for the destination and delivering impact.
In 2024, the Vienna Tourist Board focused on raising awareness about the neighbourhoods surrounding the inner city, encouraging visitors to take a short detour away from the main tourist attractions to discover hidden gems. These ‘Grätzels’ are accessible by walking or short public transport journeys. While it's extremely challenging to influence visitor behaviour, the integration of the message across all communications helped to showcase the value of exploration to travellers, who now more than ever are determined to find exceptional experiences.
With a clear strategic underpinning to the promotion of diverse neighbourhoods, each Grätzel was carefully selected with several factors in mind:
Local politicians from each featured district were consulted in the planning process to ensure they understood the strategic aims of the Heartbeat Streets initiative and its potential implications. While some politicians were excited from the outset about the opportunity to receive increased attention, others were more hesitant, particularly due to concerns that being featured in marketing would bring crowds to their small communities. By engaging with politicians, the Vienna Tourist Board created a collaborative approach that was respectful of the needs and concerns of local communities, ultimately enhancing the local business environment with the opening of new restaurants and pop-up shops.
With this in mind, expectation management is a central, but often overlooked, aspect of destination promotion, highlighting how it attracts visitors who will appreciate and contribute to the city's prosperity. Being transparent about when the stories will be shared by the media and how the avoidance of time-limited campaigns reduces the risk of a short burst of travellers arriving together is crucial in building strong relationships with local stakeholders. Similarly, understanding the specific pain points faced by communities and openness to proactive cooperation helps to determine appropriate management strategies through working with the government to implement targeted regulations, such as tighter restrictions on short-term rentals, helping create a conducive environment for locals to warmly welcome visitors.
Despite the improving capabilities of generative AI, with authenticity at the centre of every message, the Vienna Tourist Board places significant importance on ensuring that all content and creative concepts are produced manually. AI does, however, have a supporting role to play in enhancing photographs to add an extra layer to storytelling. This approach helps to disrupts the flow of just consuming content and stimulates travellers to stop and think about what they are viewing, with these visuals acting as powerful inspiration. However, transparency is essential to ensure that such creativity does not detract from the overarching authenticity of the destination's appeal and brand.
The careful curation of channels is also a key driver of the Vienna Tourist Board's successful thematic activations. With 700 hosted media representatives in 2024, the DMO encourages journalists to experience the city for themselves and to share their truthful encounters of what the city made them feel. This brings an impartial, trusted and credible source of information to target audiences through press coverage and printed media about unknown sides of Vienna that should be visited by both first time and repeat visitors. Building on this initial inspiration, the Vienna Tourist Board's YouTube (53,500 subscribers), social media (1.5 million followers) and website (30 million annual page views across 13 languages) provide complementary messages that transform this interest into a desire to visit. Having this integrated approach actively drives the narrative, with each channel adding additional elements to the overarching story while presenting a unified vision of the city.
Importantly, the Ivie app, with over 1.3 million downloads and half a million active users each month, acts an an in-destination component for continued storytelling. As a digital tool, the app is personalised using smart algorithms and also includes a large database of events in the city. Ivie is designed to be educational and aspirational, combining gamification with walks and guides to help visitors explore the city in depth. The gamification elements, such as the Sigmund Freud Challenge that engaged 15,000 users, are particularly innovative, sparking not only enjoyment but are also designed to create an impact through the equitable spread of tourists across the city.
The integration of Ivie with the multichannel thematic messaging effectively demonstrates the well-rounded approach to storytelling throughout the visitor journey; from the initial exposure to inspiring content in digital and printed media and on social media all the way through to the actual visitor experience. This enables visitors to remain connected to Vienna and fosters a community of passionate advocates who actively want to engage with the city’s ongoing story.
Director Mediahouse
Vienna Tourist Board
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Designed to teach you how to master must-have tools and acquire essential skills to succeed in managing your destination or organisation, be ready to challenge all of your assumptions.
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