Switzerland Tourism

Switzerland is often regarded as a destination for winter skiing holidays, whilst being overlooked as an excellent holiday destination during the summer months. To counter this misplaced perception, Switzerland Tourism run annual campaigns to market the country as a summer holiday destination, and Pan 3Sixty was suitably delighted to be commissioned to work on the summer campaign for 2015.

Summer marketing campaigns

With fabulous views at every turn, Switzerlands stunning mountain scenery and beautifully serene lakes are world-famous. Working with tourism managers in Cantons across the country, the Switzerland Tourism team and Pan 3Sixty drew up a shortlist of seven must see views to promote as summer destinations. These included views from Jungfraujoch overlooking Kline Scheidegg, from Mount Rigi overlooking Lake Lucern, and also Rochers de Naye overlooking Montreux and Lake Geneva. Pan 3Sixty’s task was to create a series of Gigapixel panoramas from each viewpoint to showcase the view in ultra-high resolution.

Photographing Switzerland

With a ‘flexible’ schedule in place to take into account of the changeable weather, photographer Phil Giles spent four weeks travelling throughout Switzerland. At each new location, he liaised with the regional Switzerland Tourism marketing manager to recce the selected location and pinpoint the most suitable spot from which to create the Gigapixel panorama. Once finalised, it was a matter of waiting for the right weather conditions.

As with all landscape projects, the weather was a major influence on how the photography progressed; sometimes we were lucky and completed the photography in a day or two, but on other occasions, changeable weather meant we spent many more days than planned at a single location.

Photographing at high altitude bought its own set of challenges into the equation. While the weather at lower altitude was often unsettled, at high altitudes it would change from minute to minute, often with the sun rapidly disappearing behind swirling cloud part way through a shoot. Partial sun one day could be followed by heavy snow the next day and then crystal clear, deep blue skies the next. Cold temperatures also lowered battery life of both the camera and the motorised panorama head, requiring us to keep a closer eye than usual on the battery levels.

After criss-crossing Switzerland several times, including multiple visits to four of the locations before suitable weather conditions materialised, we successfully photographed all eight views.

A custom designed user interface

While the Gigapixel panoramas were processed and retouched, we started work on a custom-designed, responsive user interface into which we would embed the finished scenes. To create a user interface with a strong visual continuity with the Switzerland Tourism website, we worked strictly to their branding guidelines.

Embedded within the panoramas are numerous pop-up information points relating to the view. Some promote local business, activities, tourist attractions and festivals, while others recount the history of places and facts about nature. While a few of the pop-up information points are simply text, most contain photographs or videos and many incorporate links to external websites where you can find further information on the subject in question.

To simplify the process of suppling the content for the pop-up information points, we created a content management system specifically for the project. Marketing managers from each of the Cantons involved were able to quickly pinpoint where the hotspots had to be placed and provide Pan 3Sixty with associated content in a precise and efficient manner.

Delivered on time and within budget, the finished Gigapixel virtual tour went live on the date specified by Switzerland Tourism.

Increasing viewer engagement

To further increase viewer engagement, and encourage people to explore each scene in detail, the virtual tour included eight competitions, with the prizes being an all-inclusive short stay holiday in the area promoted by the Gigapixel panorama. To be in with a chance to win, the viewer needed to find the Swiss mascot hidden within each scene, at which point they clicked the mascot to enter the competition.

On the closing date of the competition, a new version of the virtual tour without the competition element seamless replaced the original version and would continue to promote the eight locations through to the end of the summer season.

Finally, a ‘send a postcard’ feature was added to the tour enabling you to select from six still photographs relating to the scene being viewed and send them to friends or family along with a short message.

Increasing ROI

Although the virtual tour was created for a single summer campaign, come wintertime the number of viewers was such that Switzerland Tourism opted to keep the virtual tour live for the rest of the year, and then on into the next years.

To further increase the clients return on their investment, each Canton involved in the projected received a copy of their Gigapixel panorama to embed into their regional tourism website.

Please note:

This virtual tour for created for a single summer season and contains links to external content, some of which may no longer work.