Skift Take
It will be interesting to see if more countries contract out large content marketing programs to established media companies, especially without any editorial oversight as was the case here with Switzerland.
Switzerland Tourism teamed up with National Geographic Traveler to develop a content platform on the Nat Geo website highlighting the newly created Switzerland Grand Tour.
The Grand Tour consists of 1,000 miles of railroad and highway journeys connecting both well-known and lesser visited destinations throughout the country. Switzerland Tourism is hoping to direct more long-haul customers to places not called Zurich or Zermatt in an effort to extend room nights and drive new business to traditionally underserved regions.
In preparation for the Grand Tour unveiling last month, the tourism board developed traditional online and print marketing materials to promote the initiative, but they also wanted something additional that was specifically designed for the North American market. In 2014, U.S. arrivals to Switzerland grew 3.7% over the previous year, but most of that was directed at luxury hotels in the iconic Alps destinations.
The Swiss marketing team chose National Geographic Traveler to promote the Grand Tour to Americans, because they felt the media company could best capture the two things underpinning it—the legacy of the iconic European Grand Tour and the adventurous spirit of Swiss alpine tourism.
"We saw in various research papers this trend of touring is still one of the most important drivers for international travel, to explore a destination from one place to another in different forms," says Alex Herrmann, director of the Americas for Switzerland Tourism. "At the same time, there's a very long history of touring in Switzerland,
