95% of holidaymakers check online rating portals such as TripAdvisor, Yelp or Expedia before traveling or while planning their trip. Top-ten-lists, must-see-places 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 instead of discovering little hidden gems. Individual choices and experiences off the beaten path become rarer and places with lower scores struggle to attract new audiences. But Vienna has a different principle when it comes to welcoming visitors. It is a city that has a lot to offer for all tastes: from imperial glamour and traditional cafés to modern architecture and green city living. There are unique moments around every corner. But how can the city provide them when visitors increasingly rely on the same recommendations promoted by TripAdvisor and other platforms?

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 imagery of perfect moments 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 leading 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.

To reach our target audience of tourists visiting famous European cities we chose some of the most popular travel destinations of urban tourism like London, Hamburg, Barcelona and Paris. These places face the same challenges of modern travel behavior and their attractions are to a certain degree ruled by online ratings and their recommendation system. Prominent large scale out of home advertising at famous shopping malls like Paris’ Galeries Lafayette brought our message right into the epicenter of tourism. Extensive branding of public transport locations like multiple stations of the London metro system exposed our campaign to millions of city-dwelling travelers rushing from sight to sight – facing them with our thought-provoking question about who really is in charge of their holiday decisions. A collaboration with a world-famous art gallery demonstrated how subjective – and eventually meaningless – anonymous ratings can be when it comes to the appreciation of culture.

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 imagery of perfect moments 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 leading 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.

The international press took the campaign as its cue to discuss ratings and their growing influence. Leading news outlets such as Süddeutsche Zeitung, The Daily Telegraph or The Washington Post joined in on the discussion as well as media closely linked to the tourism industry like Monocle or Lonely Planet. Further acknowledgement came from within the tourism industry that welcomed the spotlight on the double-edged reality of ratings. Overall, the campaign reached 275 million earned media impressions with a limited budget. Journalists took the opportunity and visited low-rated places in Vienna and compared their negative reviews to the actual value of these places – further creating discussion among target audiences. Commercially, a new record of overnight stays was achieved, a staggering 17.6 million, which equals an increase by 6.8% compared to the previous year. Viennese tourism reached a sales increase of 14 % – another record-breaking figure in that year.