Tourism board tired of confused visitors turning up in Scandinavia. Video / Visit Sweden
The national tourism board of Sweden says it is suffering from an identity crisis. One in two adults in the US are not able to tell the difference between Sweden and Switzerland.
Visit Sweden recently announced there were 85,000 Google searches last year for the query: “Are Sweden and Switzerland the same?”
As you can imagine, this has led to some very confusing holiday bookings.
A Dynata market survey commissioned by the Swedish tourism organisation showed one in 10 respondents in the US admitted to trying to book flights to the wrong country when planning travel to Europe. Last year, the White House had to apologise after US President Joe Biden mistakenly welcomed Switzerland’s bid to join Nato, when he meant Sweden.
Visit Sweden say it is an honest, but very real, mistake and the subject of a new tourism campaign titled “Sweden (not Switzerland)”.
Stockholm or Zurich? The Northern Lights appear over the Swedish capital. Photo / Visit Sweden
While both popular tourism destinations share many aspects, Visit Sweden’s CEO Susanne Andersson argues that these similarities are superficial. And just two letters deep.
“If people struggle to separate our two countries, we need to help them. We can’t change the names of our nations, but we can become more distinct,” she says.
While 80 per cent of respondents associated both Scandinavian and Helvetian holidays with snow and mountains, in fact, the countries’ topography is very different.
Visit Sweden says its big USP is 3218 kilometres of coastline versus landlocked Switzerland.
While Sweden’s northerly location means it enjoys chilly winters, it has an average height of 320 metres above sea level, versus Switzerland’s average of 1,350m in the precipitous alps. While both countries are mad for snow sports, Visit Sweden argues their ski resorts offer a lot better value, if not as much downhill action.
Both countries are relatively expensive places to travel, with Trip.com advising travellers budget around $150 to $200 per day in Sweden versus $200 to $300 in Switzerland.
A misbooked holiday would be an expensive mistake to make.
Are in northern Sweden: The ski-mad country shares a lot of similarities with Switzerland. Photo / Henrik Trygg, Visit Sweden
“Switzerland is often referred to as the pinnacle of luxury - however, Sweden offers luxury of a different nature, and these differences, in all of their beauty, are what we want to showcase,” says Andersson.
To do so, the Swedish tourism board has begun a petition to send to the Swiss Federal Assembly to stop confusion with the Cantons.
For example, Switzerland could lay claim to yodelling and cowbells, while Sweden has a claim to the sound of pinewoods and Abba.
Switzerland already has stringent laws on IP and use of national emblems by private companies. Earlier this year, chocolate maker Toblerone was told it could no longer use the emblem of the Matterhorn mountain on its packaging after production was moved outside of Switzerland.
The Swiss tourism authority in Australia and New Zealand, MySwitzerland, was contacted for comment.
Genuine confusion for international travellers
In 2021, Swedish tourism was worth US$6.03 billion, versus the colossal US$39b of international tourism in Switzerland - this petition for greater protection of Swedish IP is a humorous attempt to associate Sweden with a much larger tourism economy.
However, confusion between similar-sounding countries has long been a genuine concern, even for some separated by continents and more than 8,450km.
In 2018 the Kingdom of Swaziland formerly changed its name to Eswatini. In part, this was to reclaim its national identity after a long colonial history, but King Mswati III said that frequent confusion with Switzerland was also a reason for change.
“I would like to announce that from today onwards, our country will be known as the Kingdom of Eswatini,” he told Reuters. “Whenever we go abroad, people refer to us as Switzerland.”
While some countries are easy to confuse, there is a big difference between mistaking countries on paper and on a plane ticket.
Yesterday, the Associated Press fact-checking service said reports Salzburg International Airport had set up a help desk for travellers who had flown to Austria instead of Australia were “false”.
The European airport confirmed it does not have a desk for misguided tourists trying to get Down Under.
This did not stop a tweet on social media network X (formerly Twitter) racking up more than 18,000 likes on Monday, claiming:
“If you’re having a bad day, just remember that the Salzburg airport has a counter for people who flew to Austria instead of Australia.”
The misconception stems from an advertisement for a technology company that ran on a baggage carousel at the airport, which joked about offering such a service.
