Rediscovering Baden-Württemberg.Digital Experience Platform
The Brief: A Digital Experience Platform
From the outset, it was clear that the new digital presence for The Süden would be much more than just a traditional website. The decision to use Contentful as a headless platform was driven by its ability to deliver modular content, seamless data integration, and the foundation for a flexible, future-proof user experience. Beyond editorial website content, data from external sources needed to be integrated into a comprehensive Digital Experience Platform (DXP). Additionally, the goal was to create an immersive experience that perfectly represents The Süden’s core themes, in line with its new corporate identity.
The goal: an inspiring and interactive digital travel guide that invites everyone to discover the diversity of Baden-Württemberg.
Requirements
- RequirementDetails
- Experience tailored to the target groupsA platform that has the same appeal to two very different target groups
- Brand experience and core topicsReflection of the new corporate design with the core themes of nature, culture, enjoyment, wine and cities
- mein.toubiz IntegrationIntegration of content from the region's tourism database mein.toubiz
- CANTO integrationIntegration of content from the central image database CANTO
- Modular approachFlexible set of content modules that can contain editorial content and data from mein.toubiz
- Search and filters for usersAdvanced website search with filter and tag logic to make the variety of content searchable
- AccessibilityEnsuring that the accessibility requirements are met
- CMS ExperienceIntuitive content maintenance that covers editorial needs
- Content, SEO, TrackingSupport with content creation and maintenance, SEO support and implementation of website tracking
For People and Brand: A Creative Concept and Intuitive Navigation
The new platform was designed around a core question: How do people search for holiday inspiration? This led to the creation of two main entry points, now featured in the primary navigation: "What to Do" and "Where to Go." What to Do presents a diverse collection of experiences, allowing users to filter based on their individual interests and personal preferences. Where to Go provides an overview of all holiday regions and city highlights in Baden-Württemberg.
In the hamburger menu, the core topics of The Süden—Nature, Culture, Taste, Wine, and Cities—are prominently placed, alongside links to the magazine section and the event calendar.
Tourism Meets Technology: Integrating the mein.toubiz Database
A key aspect of the technical implementation was integrating the state-wide tourism database mein.toubiz. With over 70,000 structured entries on destinations, tours, and events, these data sets needed to be seamlessly embedded into The Süden website.
To achieve this, we developed a custom-built app that makes mein.toubiz data accessible within the Contentful backend. The advantage? mein.toubiz retains full data sovereignty, while updates are dynamically synchronised in real time.
Tag Mapping: Where Categories Meet Core Themes
The tourism data from mein.toubiz is tagged with hundreds of categories—but for The Süden platform, only a part was needed. To cluster them into relevant core topics like nature or culture, we created a flexible workaround: Our custom mein.toubiz-Contentful app transforms the complex category structure into a simplified, tailored tagging system through manual mapping. The best part: The content team at Tourismus Marketing GmbH Baden-Württemberg (TMBW) gains editorial flexibility, while mein.toubiz retains full data ownership.
Instant Inspiration: The "What to Do" Filter
To make the countless treasures of Baden-Württemberg easily searchable, we developed a user-centric filter logic—powered by the simplified tag structure. With the What to Do filter, users can narrow down the vast array of experiences to match their personal interests: Whether it’s a nearby castle or a culinary family hike in Hohenlohe, the filter makes discovering Southwest Germany effortless.
Picture-Perfect: Seamless CANTO Integration
The stunning imagery of Baden-Württemberg tells its own story. To ensure the The Süden website captures this visual richness, we seamlessly integrated the central CANTO image database— also with a custom-built Contentful app. This ensures that suitable images from CANTO can be found along the original folder structure and transferred directly into the content with all metadata such as alt tags and copyright. This significantly reduces the workload for the TMBW editorial team: Double maintenance, manual saving processes and broken references are a thing of the past.
Modular, Flexible, and Vibrant: The Content Module System
As compact as necessary, as flexible as possible. For the The Süden website, we developed a set of 12 content modules—including 10 core modules and 2 more complex hub modules. The aim was to create a building-block system that offers maximum versatility and reusability while meeting all key content requirements and editorial workflows.
Each module was designed so that it can be used in different content contexts and is easy to maintain. Thanks to this modular approach and a variety of colour options, the set enables the TMBW editorial team to efficiently assemble content pages that feel dynamic, engaging, and visually diverse.
Bucket List for Baden-Württemberg: A Simple Way to Bookmark
There's so much to discover in The Süden. To ensure users don’t lose track of their favorite finds, we’ve built a simple bookmarking feature. This allows users to save experiences and editorial content to their personal list—locally on their device, with no user profile required. One click on the heart is all it takes.
Even Greater Impact: SEO, Content Support & Tracking
As part of the holistic implementation of the DXP, we identified SEO opportunities within the content, optimized page and module structures, and provided strategic guidance on domain and URL structure. In terms of content, we provided hands-on support—collaborating closely with a freelance copywriter and assisting with the initial population of website content.
To ensure accessibility requirements were met, we worked with external experts. Additionally, we coordinated with mein.toubiz representatives to seamlessly integrate the tourism database in the best possible way.
Finally, we implemented a custom tracking framework to measure website performance—enabling continuous optimisation and improvement.
Giving The Süden a digital home was not just an exciting challenge but also a true passion project for us as a Ludwigsburg-based agency. With the relaunch, the first milestone has been set—laying the groundwork for enormous future potential. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with the team at Tourismus Marketing GmbH Baden-Württemberg to bring even more ideas to life—so that people from near and far can digitally experience the beauty and diversity of Baden-Württemberg.
