Screenshot Mobile Phone and Computer with wwwmyswitzerland.com opened

In Love With Switzerland

Switzerland Tourism

Awards

Switzerland Tourism is Switzerland's national tourism marketing organisation with headquarter in Zurich and representations in 26 countries, which attracts domestic and foreign guests to Switzerland as a holiday, travel and congress destination. Nowadays, the Internet is the most important source of tourist information and the central point of initial customer contact. The backbone of guest communication of Switzerland Tourism is the MySwitzerland website. Here Switzerland Tourism provides guests with high-quality, expertly tested content and prepares it according to the principles of experience marketing.

The relaunch is a joint venture with Switzerland Tourism and Hinderling Volkart. Our experts are responsible for the technical conception and architecture, the complex backend development and integration of the existing surrounding systems as well as the operation and georedundant hosting of the infrastructure with a focus on high performance and availability. The strategic platform is based on Sitecore 9.

The project is Master of Swiss Web 2020!

Customer: Switzerland Tourism
Customer since: 2017
Go-Live: April 2019
Website: www.myswitzerland.com

45'000

tourist objects

16

languages

32 Million

visits per year

2

locally separated data centers

Immerse yourself in Switzerland

MySwitzerland.com is enthusiastic about Switzerland as a travel destination. The extensive platform accompanies travellers from inspiration through information to planning. It also creates a world of experience in which users immerse themselves thanks to impressive images, virtual reality elements and authentic sounds. Users can find all useful information for planning excursions and experiences directly on the site: Arrival, tickets, bathing weather, customs or facts about geography, currency or important numbers – all within a click.

To the interview: A Keen Eye for Innovation Serving Switzerland

Countless experiences in a small area

The Matterhorn, the Viamala Gorge, the Unesco Biosphere Entlebuch, the Zürifäscht, St. Peter's Island, challenging mountain bike tours: Switzerland offers an extraordinary variety of experiences in a small area. This makes Switzerland's tourism visible. The density of information on the website is enormous. Over 86,000 tourist objects such as destinations, routes, events, sights, experiences and accommodation are depicted in detail and located on a map. The corresponding partner platforms are directly accessible via MySwitzerland.com for the effective booking of offers and accommodation.

Pure inspiration

MySwitzerland.com takes the user on a journey through the breathtaking beauties of Switzerland. A visual and technical highlight is certainly the MySwitzerland Inspiration Calendar, which shows Switzerland in all its diversity and four seasons in 48 films of 15 seconds each. An additional visual navigation level leads directly from the film to the content. With these inspiring overflights, backed up by bird twittering or waterfall noise, the user can also immerse himself with virtual reality glasses.

High performance access for all

Switzerland Tourism wants to reach and inspire guests from all over the world. This includes personally picking up guests in their own language. myswitzerland.com is therefore available in 16 languages for all 26 destination countries. Videos and images are core elements of the website. A sophisticated system architecture was designed and implemented to ensure that all elements are available worldwide with high performance. Two Content Delivery Networks (CDN) are used for a globally high-performance content distribution, China included.

Switzerland Tourism also provides access to MySwitzerland.com for handicapped people such as the blind, visually impaired or people with limited mobility – but also for older people. Accessibility was the focus of the project right from the start, so that the website is now technically barrier-free throughout.

More about content management between standard and flexibility

Getting to the right information without detours

A big challenge of such a rich website with different content types is to accompany the user as quickly as possible to the relevant information. Structure and usability were therefore central to the relaunch. The first level of content is divided into „travel destinations“, „experiences“ „accommodations“ and „planning“. From there, the user finds what he is looking for with just a few clicks: Experiences – Hike: After two clicks the user finds over 500 hikes. Thanks to intelligent search and filter options, the search can be narrowed down further. Each individual tour contains detailed route information, pictures, maps and the current weather.

Alternatively, the user can use the powerful onsite search to quickly find the desired information in the most direct way.

Central content hub – decentralized organization

The strategic content platform based on Sitecore 9 functions as a hub. More than 20 interfaces import information from various surrounding systems and then process, enrich and network it in the content management system. The content maintenance of the platform is organized decentrally: The local content managers of Switzerland Tourism can adapt the information to country-specific conditions and create landing pages for special campaigns.

Automation thanks to artificial intelligence

MySwitzerland.com relies on artificial intelligence to process over 400,000 images. All images have to be processed in various formats for different screens and connection speeds. For this complex task, a machine learning service was integrated that recognizes the relevant content on the images and prepares and delivers the images in all necessary formats. This is Switzerland Tourism's entry into the use of artificial intelligence – further areas of application will certainly follow.

More about AI in image management

Georedundant Hosting

Due to the high availability requirements, the system infrastructure is operated georedundant at two different data center locations. The data is synchronized in real time between the two locations. This ensures seamless availability in the event of a malfunction.

More about georedundant hosting

Cross-functional and distributed teams

The extremely complex platform was created by an international project team using a hybrid project methodology (Hermes, Agil: Scrum & Kanban). The project team is cross-functional and distributed across different locations. The experts from the various disciplines involved worked hand in hand, distributed across Zurich, Bern, Minsk and Wrocław. Ideas were developed and sharpened, concepts elaborated and questioned, and solutions developed and expanded in close and intensive cooperation with the clients of Switzerland Tourism.

With the new concept and relaunch of MySwitzerland.com we have created a new standard in tourism marketing. Our potential guests can be inspired by the beauties of Switzerland from all over the world. With just a few clicks they will receive valuable information and services for their travel planning.
Thomas Winkler
Member of the Management Board

Our services at Schweiz Tourismus

Software Development and IT-Architecture

Software development has been one of Unic's core competencies for over 20 years. We develop a solution tailored to your needs for your company's digital presence. Please contact us!

Learn more:Software Development and IT-Architecture

Managed Services

Managed services combine web hosting and application operation. We can assume full responsibility for your web application, covering both 24/7 operation and specific application monitoring.

Learn more:Managed Services