The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2025–2026
Austria asks tourists to sign an NDA before revealing hidden winter gems
To save hidden spots from crowds, Austria's tourist board makes visitors sign an NDA for secret ski routes: no sharing, no geotagging.
Austrian National Tourist Office
What it had to solve
Austria's national tourism body (Österreich Werbung) wanted to promote off-the-beaten-path winter destinations for the 2025/26 season without turbo-charging overtourism. Its own site states the problem plainly: when too many people talk about a hidden gem, it blows up on social media, gets overcrowded — and loses what made it special.
How it works
For the 2025/26 winter season, Austria's national tourist office launched 'Non Disclosure Austria': tourists who wanted insider knowledge — handpicked ski routes, mountain huts and snowy escapes — first had to sign a real Non-Disclosure Agreement. The campaign site explained why: a hidden gem that gets posted online blows up, crowds in, and loses what made it special.
The mechanic inverted every travel-marketing default. Instead of earn-a-share, hashtag and geotag, the NDA required the opposite — no sharing, no geotagging, no bragging — with the comfort note that it is 'more of a pact between friends': no lawyers involved, no legal action, promise.
Secrecy became the product. The insider tips were not public content but confidences you had to commit to keep, which made them feel like a privilege rather than a brochure. The campaign also protected the very destinations it promoted, trading reach for preservation.
The work took the Webby Award for Tourism & Leisure in Branded Content at the 30th Annual Webby Awards in April 2026, and the campaign site itself — the place where the NDA is signed and the secrets are unlocked — remains the artefact that won.
Why it lands
- Making silence a signed promise beats asking for it: the tourist's own commitment, not a hashtag, carries the anti-crowding message.
- The anti-influencer, anti-overtourism stance spoke directly to Europe's tourist-fatigue anxiety — a reversal the press and jury found news-worthy.
- Locking tips behind an NDA turned information into a privilege, so visitors consumed the secrecy itself as an experience.
- The 'pact between friends' framing removed legal fear, so the only cost of entry was curiosity.
What it did
The interactive site won the Webby Award in the Tourism & Leisure category of Branded Content at the 30th Annual Webby Awards (April 2026), turning an anti-viral tourism idea into award-winning work while the hidden-gem list stayed intact.
What you can take
When crowds are the enemy, sell the opposite of shareability: a signed promise not to post turns your best customers into guardians of the place, and the secrecy itself becomes the draw.
Since then
Non Disclosure Austria stayed live as an interactive campaign site through the winter, and its Webby win in April 2026 cemented it as a case study in anti-viral tourism marketing. The campaign ran inside Austria's wider 'no overcrowding, Austria is different' positioning on austria.info, showing how destination marketing can promote hidden places without crowding them into oblivion.
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