Flughafen Zürich

To position a leading traffic hub in Europe on the market.

As the operator of Switzerland's most important traffic and meeting hub, with 1,570 employees, Zurich Airport is a high-quality airport in the heart of Europe, and the gateway to the world.

The Zurich Airport brand stands for a special class among the world's major traffic hubs: the class of the ‘Leading Small Hubs of the World’. The airport is one of the most attractive departure, transfer, arrival, and stopover points for land and air traffic.

Hotz Brand Consultants were tasked with a re-brand that presented Zurich Airport as a unique Swiss gateway to the world, at the same time the gateway to the Alps, a new kind of quality of stay. To match the essence of Zurich Airport, the brand identity needed to reflect the client's characteristics: outstanding quality, well thought out, and arranged in a manageable way around the clock, seven days a week.

A brand name that reflects on the core performance.

How can the identity of an airport be captured? What historical strengths does the company build on? What values are behind the company that should be lived out on a daily basis? How can the fact that the airport offers various services that are not directly related to the core services of an airport be taken into account? In a well-founded identity process, a new vision, corporate values, and differentiation factors were developed and implemented in the company.

Due to the fact that the previous name "Unique" led to misunderstandings and wasn’t truly relevant, it was necessary to combine the diverse services of the company under a name that is differentiating and sustainable in the long term. The solution was to return to the roots of the airport and to name it after what Zurich Airport is first and foremost: an airport. For this reason, the brand was renamed "Flughafen Zürich" and, in English, "Zurich Airport".

For the diverse services of the brand, an architecture was chosen that exists without any sub-brands and unites all services under the brand Zurich Airport. This allows all activities to feed into the brand, meaning communication efficiency could be increased.

In order to make the brand consistently tangible across all contact points and also to develop it continuously, Hotz Brand Consultants accompanied Zurich Airport in all brand issues and developed relevant media and contact points consistently in the identity of the brand.

Uniform brand communication. Clear, relevant, precise.

As a result of the re-branding, the name ‘Zurich Airport’ now focuses on the core service of the business. The focused brand architecture affords optimal efficiency within all services under the brand, as one identity for all activities. A clear vision and sustainable values for a multifaceted company along with uniform brand communication allow Zurich Airport to act as one, cohesive entity.