19 Awards for the Vienna Tourist Board

Vienna Tourist Board Wins Multiple Awards

The Vienna Tourist Board won a total of 19 awards and distinctions in 2025. 12 prizes were secured at the Creativ Club Austria (CCA) Awards alone, and a further four at the iab WebAD awards show. At the prestigious American Webby Awards in 2025, the Vienna Tourist Board’s ivie app stood out against 13,000 entries, securing a spot among the top five travel apps worldwide.

Waltz into Space

To mark the 200th anniversary of Johann Strauss II’s birth, the Vienna Tourist Board and the European Space Agency (ESA), supported by the Wiener Symphoniker orchestra, sent the famous Blue Danube Waltz on an odyssey into outer space. Dubbed “Waltz into Space”, the mission corrected an oversight dating all the way back to 1977, and the omission of the unofficial anthem of space from the Voyager Golden Records when the discs were sent out into the universe. On May 31, 2025, the Wiener Symphoniker orchestra performed an interstellar concert at the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK). Under Chief Conductor Petr Popelka, the orchestra played selected works with a galactic theme. The highlight of the concert was the Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss II, which was transmitted in real time to the ESA’s Deep Space Antenna DSA 2 in Cebreros, Spain. From there, Strauss’s waltz traveled as electromagnetic waves at the speed of light into the universe – toward Voyager 1. Exactly 23 hours later, the signal overtook the NASA space probe, which has been traveling through space since 1977 to share earthly masterpieces with potential extraterrestrial life. The campaign received two gold WebAD awards in the Best Digital Campaign Creativity and Best International Campaign categories.

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Microdose Vienna: Pills With a Taste of Vienna

“Microdosing” – something of a trending topic in the Anglo-American world in particular – is the term that describes the use of pharmacological substances in minimal quantities to enhance creativity, focus, and feelings of happiness. As a legal alternative to consuming actual drugs, the Vienna Tourist Board – in a collaboration with Vienna’s Saint Charles Pharmacy – developed half a dozen different tablets that captured the essence of six hand-picked Vienna moments. Key ingredients included the sweat of a Lipizzaner stallion from the Spanish Riding School, sound waves from a Wiener Symphoniker orchestra concert, dust particles from Gustav Klimt’s portrait of Emilie Flöge, tartaric acid from the Mayer am Pfarrplatz wine tavern’s Gemischter Satz, steel particles from the Giant Ferris Wheel, and the spirit from Sigmund Freud’s recently discovered private safe. The “microdose vienna” campaign urged audiences to “Take a Trip to Vienna” – after all, even the merest hint of the city can be incredibly compelling. The Vienna Tourist Board sent its exclusive collection of tablets – packaged like a genuine pharmaceutical product – to selected media representatives and content creators in the USA and the UK, and presented “microdose vienna” at a press event in New York. Although the pill sets were not available for purchase, audiences in the USA and UK could win ten sets each in a competition on the campaign website. “Microdose vienna” reached approximately 22 million contacts. The social media campaign picked up seven awards in 2025. At the CCA Awards, it won gold in the New Use of Media and Package Design categories, silver in the Creative Strategy, Integrated Campaign, Innovation and PR Campaign categories and bronze in the Promotion & POS Experience category.

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UnReal Estates: Belvedere and Schönbrunn Palace for Sale

The endless quest to find the perfect home is as relentless as ever in the USA. The Vienna Tourist Board tapped into this trend in 2024 with its UnReal Estates campaign, presenting true real estate dreams on Realtor.com – one of America’s most prominent online real estate marketplaces. The platform offered its approximately 100 million monthly active users the chance to snap up the magnificent Baroque palaces of Belvedere and Schönbrunn, Sisi’s imperial retreat, and the former home and office of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. A click on the listing redirected house hunters to the campaign site, where they were ultimately brought back down to Earth. But to make up for the disappointment, users were given the chance to win a trip to Vienna. UnReal Estates was rolled out in New York, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Boston, and Chicago, aiming to inspire potential visitors to take a trip to opulent Vienna. The campaign reached approximately 6.5 million contacts, and won bronze at the CCA Awards in the New Use of Media and Direct Marketing categories. 

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Credits:
Vienna Tourist Board: Claudia Wieland, Lukas Merl, Patricia Deubner, Sandra Tiller, Elisabeth Breuer
Jung von Matt: Michael Nagy, Andreas Kadenbach, Stefan Bauernberger, Ina Vodivnik, Theresa Scherrer, Simon Herret, Tina Arakis, Lisa Gärtner, Anna Löwer
Havas: Nina Blazejovsky

A Day in Vienna as a Mayfly

To mark Halloween and the 150th anniversary of Vienna’s Central Cemetery on November 1, 2024, the Vienna Tourist Board released “Vienna: the last place you want to be.”, a campaign video portraying the Austrian capital both as the world’s most liveable and “die-able” city. With a mayfly spending its only day on Earth in Vienna cast in the leading role, the minute-long film – which was produced in partnership with Jung von Matt DONAU and director Sam Gainsborough from London-based production company BlinkInk – featured a score brought to life by Austrian composer and producer Walter Werzowa with a 40-piece orchestra comprising students from Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts. It was promoted in Germany, the UK, Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland, the USA, and Canada. In the USA, “Vienna: the last place you want to be” was also advertised on the streaming platform Disney+, and on Netflix in Canada.
The campaign video was viewed over 10.6 million times, and the experts at a leading global media and advertising outfit "The Drum" named it their Ad of the Day a short time after its launch. Additionally, it triggered well over 100 media reports about Vienna’s morbid side, with prestigious outlets such as the UK’s Financial Times, Italy’s La Stampa, and Spain’s 20 minutos covering Vienna’s unique approach to the theme of death. Even in Asian markets, where the subject of death can be something of a cultural taboo, the campaign was well-received, appearing, for example, in South Korea’s Esquire Korea.

The campaign video picked up silver in the Animation and Online Video categories and bronze in the Digital Campaign category at the CCA Awards. It also won gold in the Best Video Ad Creativity and silver in the Best International Campaign categories at the WebAD Awards.

Credits:
Vienna Tourist Board: Claudia Wieland, Lukas Merl, Patrick Hilz, Isabella Graf 
Creative Agency: Jung von Matt DONAU 
Production Company BlinkInk: Sam Gainsborough, Alexander Handschuh, Joe Gainsborough
Animation-Studio: Saurus
Vienna Co-Producer: Dockyard
Music Arrangement & Production: Walter Werzowa
Sound Design: Factory