95% of holidaymakers check online rating portals such as TripAdvisor or Expedia before traveling or while planning their trip. Top-ten-lists, must-see-lists and the sights with the highest score dominate these websites. This causes a homogenization of travel experiences because more and more visitors rely on the same reviews and scores and simply experience more of the same. Individual choices and experiences off the beaten path become rarer and places with lower scores struggle to attract new audiences. Vienna is a city that encourages visitors to make unique experiences and to not entrust anonymous online raters with choosing them for you.

For the campaign “Unrating Vienna” we emblazoned the worst and often weirdest real user reviews found on the web’s most prominent rating platforms over perfect moments, memorable experiences or beautiful spots in Vienna to help visualize the absurdity of the ratings mania. Users downvoting a church because there was no wifi, a traditional café because they offered no coffee to go or an art gallery because it had too many works on display. The outdoor campaign was rolled out in Austria, Germany, Spain, France and the UK. Our digital ads were displayed in places ruled by ratings – on popular online platforms such as TripAdvisor or Amazon, bravely taking on the “rating giants” on their own territory. In Vienna, one of the world’s most famous art galleries had its most absurd real ratings projected onto its facade for everyone to see in one of the city’s most frequented squares.