Visit Sweden needed to change Swedish tourist’s attitude towards traveling in their own country. In the wake of the pandemic many just dreamed of going abroad, and the engagement for domestic travel was on a decline. Our job was to make Swedes look at their home with new eyes.

When corona struck in 2020 a new phenomenon occurred - “Involuntary tourism”. Borders and airports closed leaving many foreign visitors trapped in Sweden. After realizing they were going to be stuck here for a while, some started exploring the country and realized they loved this place.

We made 11 of these involuntary tourists into Visit Sweden’s official tourist guides and gathered all their personal photos, videos and stories and turned into a physical guide book, a digital travel tool, online videos, long-read-articles and podcast material.

This was the first time Visit Sweden was targeting domestic tourists. To get them interested we needed to think beyond the traditional campaigns and the endless “10 hidden gems in Sweden lists” that most stopped paying attention to.

We still needed to present interesting destinations in, but also to catch people's interest and get them talking. So when the media was flooded with horrible stories about the pandemic, we managed to show something good that came out of it. The theme of “involuntary tourism” was something new, unexpected and uplifting.

With this idea we managed to get a PR story and at the same time give the audience inspiration through the guide book, unique campaign material created with their personal photos, videos and stories. And the digital travel tool that we then encouraged our audience to use for planning their vacation.

Since we had a limited budget, the involuntary tourists’ own photos and videos was key. Since they had unknowingly gathered material over the whole year before, we could plan the releases of the different parts. The more summery parts for when people plan their summer vacation in the spring and the wintery parts for when they plan their ski trips and Christmas holidays.

This new phenomenon spread in tv and press, social media and podcasts with a total campaign reach of 6,2 million impressions.

A whopping 70% of the audience claimed to have been inspired to rediscover Sweden, and 66% want to explore new Swedish gems they didn't know about.

The audience spent 3 full minutes (on average) reading the articles published for the campaign. That´s 300% above the benchmark and a testament to how the idea truly got Swedes interested and engaged. Similar results are evident for online activities. Not only did the assets grab the attention of the audience, but delivered 225% over benchmark with a click-through-rate of 3,38%,