Visit Norway’s toilet page: 5 moves behind a 540x traffic jump

Visit Norway’s toilet page became the most-viewed page on its website after a US president’s insult, with page views more than 540 times higher than the week before, Skift reported on Friday. The page is five years old and lists public toilets along the country’s scenic routes.

Donald Trump called Norway a “sh*t house country” on Sunday 25 October at a campaign rally in Port Huron, Michigan, and tied it to not winning the Nobel Prize. On Monday night Visit Norway changed a few headlines, and the page now reads “Norway makes shithouses great again!” By 5 November it had drawn 200,000 views and related social posts had reached 5 million organic views, Visit Norway told Fast Company. Five moves explain it.

1. They answered inside the news cycle

The rally was on Sunday. By Monday night the new headlines were live. Since Monday the page had drawn more than 80,000 views from more than 170 countries, and on Friday morning it was getting about 4,000 views an hour.

Speed meant the answer arrived while the insult was still the story. A reply a week later is a footnote. For a hotel group, airline or OTA, the lesson is to settle who signs off a reactive post before the moment arrives, so the turnaround is hours.

2. They chose humour over politics

Christine Baglo, editor-in-chief of Visitnorway.com, said: “We thought that it’s not too political, just fun.” Evgenia Egorova, senior consultant at Visit Norway, said: “The world needs a little laugh. We thought: let’s meet them with kindness, and a little humour.”

Jens Kjeldsen, a rhetoric professor at the University of Bergen, put it this way: “It’s like the bully in kindergarten. If you get too serious, the bully wins.” Baglo said her inbox filled with messages from Canada, the US and beyond saying “This has made us want to go.” A light tone kept the brand out of a fight and left room for travellers to respond.

3. They had a real product on the Norwegian Scenic Routes

The toilets sit along 18 designated Norwegian Scenic Routes, and DesignCurial ranks the Stegastein viewpoint restroom among the 10 best public toilets in the world. Anne-Signe Fagereng, Visit Norway’s head of consumer marketing, said architecture and design are used deliberately along the routes. Many rest stops have won international architecture awards, and several have become attractions in their own right.

The joke worked because the toilets are worth a visit. A quarter of the page’s visitors were American and they stayed more than a minute and a half on average. An OTA or hotel can test the same thing: if the punchline leads to a product someone can book, the laugh turns into inbound demand.

4. They reused a toilet page they already owned

Visit Norway did not build a campaign. It changed a few headlines on a page that had existed for five years. Travel Tomorrow, citing Skift, reports that the board spent less than US$10,000 promoting the campaign.

A page that already ranks, already has photographs and already has a booking path behind it needs only a new frame. Hotels, airlines and tourism boards usually hold more of these than they use: old guides, route pages, amenity pages. A reactive marketing team at a tourism board that audits them in advance can pick one in minutes.

5. They let partners join in

Visit Bergen and Den Norske Turistforening, the Norwegian Trekking Association, posted their own videos answering Trump. Helene Frihammer, tourism director at Visit Bergen, said many of the commenters were Americans apologising. Visit Norway told NRK that by Wednesday afternoon its Instagram post had more than 750,000 views, and that Americans are its second-largest follower group.

The Norwegian Public Roads Administration has started a forest-inspired restroom built from dried wood from about 60 to 70 trees, and Visit Norway uses it as a “more to come” hook. Partners multiplied the reach and the new build gives the story a second chapter. Airlines and hotels can do the same by briefing local partners early and keeping a next product to announce.

Key takeaway

Keep one well-built page of real product ready, agree a sign-off path that works inside 24 hours, and brief partners to follow your lead. Afterwards, publish the numbers as Visit Norway did: the multiple on the week before, countries reached, time on page and the share of visitors from your key market. We would copy that last step first, because it is what turns a funny post into a case for the next budget.

Daksh Sharma

Chief Editor, TravHQ

Daksh Sharma is a travel tech enthusiast and a prolific voice in the B2B travel industry. A speaker at numerous travel-tech events, he is at the forefront of digital and AI adoption in travel. He conducts AI training and implementation programmes and works as a digital advisor to a number of global B2B brands.

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