Snow covered mountain range with a blue sky peeking through.

Wacky Tourism Campaigns: Get a Phone Call in Tschlin, Graubünden

The tiny municipality of Tschlin in Graubünden, Switzerland had a super creative way to get more people to visit.

Nowadays, when you get a phone call from someone you don’t know, how do you react? Maybe you just let it go to voicemail, or you angrily answer with a disgruntled “hello?!” I get it. Answering the phone can feel like torture sometimes. If you live in the tiny municipality of Tschlin in Graubünden, Switzerland, you were RUNNING to pick up the phone.

Back in 2016, the small town — which has somewhere between 166 and 448 people, depending on what population estimate you believe — ran a tourism campaign centered around a phone in the town square.

The premise was simple: Over the span of six days, foreigners would call the phone. The idea was that the town was normally so serene that the phone would be audible no matter where you were in Tschlin. If a local answered the phone, the caller would get a pleasant conversation out of it. But if nobody picked up, the caller would win a trip to Graubünden or a bevy of other prizes.

Remember that small number of people in the village? It turns out an estimated 23 million people heard about the ad, with 30,000 people making calls and 3,906 conversations taking place. That’s an average of about 9 to 23 calls per person in the town! And you’ve gotta imagine some folks still went with the mindset of “Eh, I’ll let it go to voicemail,” even though payphones in the center of town probably don’t have a reliable voicemail system set up.

Today, Tschlin is part of a new municipality after merging with another small area called Ramosch. The combined population of the “mega” municipality Valsot is an estimated 826 people. That’s still a lot of phone calls to make.

What do you think—would you participate in this tourism activity? I find it pretty charming. It gives you a chance to connect with someone across the world, even if only for a few minutes. That’s what travel is all about!

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