A Digital Experience Platform for Baden-Württemberg.
"We are the South" – self-confident and radiant, Baden-Württemberg presents itself as a dream destination welcoming guests from Germany and around the world. Together with Tourismus Marketing GmbH Baden-Württemberg (TMBW), we redesigned, reimagined, and redeveloped the official website of this holiday region. The relaunch focuses on a strong brand experience, combining website content in the CMS Contentful with content from external databases. The result: a modern user experience that inspires and invites visitors to discover the south of Germany digitally – and to experience it in real life.
The Brief: A Digital Experience Platform
From the very beginning, it was clear that the new digital presence for "Wir sind Süden" would be more than a conventional website. Contentful was chosen as a headless platform offering modular content, seamless data integration, and the foundation for a flexible, future-proof user experience. In addition to editorial website content, data from external sources was to be consolidated within a Digital Experience Platform (DXP). Furthermore — in keeping with the new corporate identity of "Wir sind Süden" — an experiential world was to be created that optimally represents the core themes of the South. Throughout all of this, two very distinct target audiences needed to be addressed: detail-oriented holiday planners and spontaneous adventurers.
The goal: an inspiring and interactive digital travel guide that invites everyone to discover the diversity of Baden-Württemberg.
Requirements
Requirement | Details |
Target audience-specific experience | A platform that equally appeals to two very different target groups |
Brand experience and core themes | Reflection of the new corporate design with the core themes of nature, culture, culinary delights, wine, and cities |
mein.toubiz integration | Integration of content from the state-wide tourism database mein.toubiz |
CANTO integration | Integration of content from the central image database CANTO |
Modular structure | A flexible set of content modules capable of incorporating editorial content and data from mein.toubiz |
Search and filter for users | Advanced website search with filter and tag logic to make the breadth of content searchable |
Accessibility | Ensuring compliance with accessibility requirements |
CMS experience | Intuitive content management that meets editorial needs |
Content, SEO, tracking | Support with content creation and maintenance, SEO guidance, and implementation of website tracking |
For People and Brand: Creative Concept and Navigation
We developed the new platform around one central question: how do people search for holiday inspiration? This gave rise to two key entry points that found their place in the main menu: "What to do" and "Where to go." "What to do" presents the vibrant collection of all experiences — filterable by users according to individual interests and personal preferences. "Where to go" provides an overview of all holiday regions and city highlights across the Ländle.
The hamburger menu is home to the core themes of "Wir sind Süden" — namely: nature, culture, culinary delights, wine, and cities — as well as links to the magazine section and the events calendar.
Touristische Erlebnisvielfalt: Anbindung an die Datenbank mein.toubiz
Zentral für die technische Realisation der Grundidee war die Anbindung der landesweiten Tourismusdatenbank mein.toubiz. Mit über 70.000 strukturierten Einträgen zu Ortschaften, Zielen, Touren und Events sollten diese Daten in die "Wir sind Süden"-Website integriert werden.
Um dies möglich zu machen, haben wir eine maßgeschneiderte App entwickelt, die die mein.toubiz-Daten im Contentful-Backend bereitstellt. Der Vorteil dieser Lösung: Die Datenhoheit bleibt bei mein.toubiz; Änderungen werden dynamisch aktualisiert.
Tag-Mapping: Wo Kategorien auf Kernthemen treffen
Die Erlebnisdaten aus mein.toubiz sind mit hunderten Kategorien vertagged – für die 'Wir sind Süden'-Experience brauchten wir aber nur einen Teil davon. Um sie entlang relevanter Themen wie Natur oder Kultur zu clustern, haben wir einen flexiblen Workaround geschaffen: Über unsere mein.toubiz-Contentful-App wird die komplexe Struktur durch ein manuelles Mapping in eine vereinfachte Tag-Struktur transformiert. Das Beste: Die Content-Verantwortlichen der TMBW behalten redaktionelle Freiheit, während die Datenhoheit bei mein.toubiz bleibt.
Inspiration auf Knopfdruck: Der Filter im "Was tun"-Bereich
Um die abertausend Schätze, die Baden-Württemberg zu bieten hat, durchsuchbar zu machen, haben wir eine userzentrierte Filter-Logik entwickelt – unterstützt von der vereinfachten Tag-Struktur. Mit dem "Was tun"-Filter können User das Potpourri an Möglichkeiten gezielt auf ihre persönlichen Interessen eingrenzen: Ob eine nahegelegene Burg oder eine kulinarische Familienwanderung im Hohenloischen – der Filter macht die Vielfalt greifbar.
Picture Perfect: The CANTO Integration
The images from Baden-Württemberg speak for themselves. To ensure the "Wir sind Süden" website perfectly reflects this visual world, we seamlessly integrated the central image database CANTO — with a custom-built Contentful app. This ensures that suitable images from CANTO can be found following the original folder structure and imported directly into content along with all metadata such as alt tags and copyright information. This significantly reduces the workload for the TMBW editorial team: duplicate maintenance, manual saving processes, and broken references are a thing of the past.
Modular, Flexible, Colourful: The Content Module Toolkit
As compact as necessary and as flexible as possible. For the "Wir sind Süden" website, we developed a set of 12 content modules — 10 base modules and 2 more complex hub modules. The goal was to create a modular building block system offering maximum versatility and reusability while covering all core requirements for content and its management.
Each module was designed to be usable in a variety of content contexts and easy to maintain. Thanks to this modularity and the selection of colour variants, the set gives the TMBW editorial team the ability to quickly and dynamically put together content pages.
Bucketlist für Baden-Württemberg: Speichern, was begeistert.
So viel zu entdecken im Süden. Damit man vor lauter Inspiration nicht den Überblickt verliert, haben wir eine simple Merkfunktion eingebaut, mit welcher sich die User Erlebnisse oder redaktionellen Content in ihrer persönlichen Merkliste speichern können. Lokal auf dem Endgerät – ganz ohne notwendiges User-Profil. Ein Klick auf's Herz genügt.
Even More Impact: SEO, Content Support & Tracking
As part of the holistic implementation of the DXP, we identified SEO opportunities within the content, optimised page and module concepts, and provided general advice regarding domain and URL structure. We also offered hands-on content support — through close collaboration with a freelance copywriter and during the initial population of website content.
To ensure that accessibility requirements were met, we worked together with external experts. We also liaised with the contacts at mein.toubiz to implement the database integration as effectively as possible.
Finally, we implemented a tailored tracking concept to make the website's performance measurable — enabling continuous optimisation going forward.
Giving "Wir sind Süden" a digital home was not only an exciting challenge, but also a true passion project for us as an agency based in Ludwigsburg. The relaunch marks the first milestone — and the potential for further development is enormous. We look forward to bringing many more ideas to life together with the team at Tourismus Marketing GmbH Baden-Württemberg — so that people near and far can experience the beauty and diversity of Baden-Württemberg in the digital world.
