Vienna Tourist Board digital channels

In 2020 the Vienna Tourist Board established another innovative channel with a wide reach: ivie, a destination app aimed at visitors and local residents alike. ivie is available on iOS and Android. The digital city guide includes more than 150 locations, as well as routes for city walks and details of around 800 cafés, bars and restaurants. Facts and figures – and in some cases out-of-the-ordinary stories – provide valuable insights into life in the city while helping visitors connect with some of Vienna’s lesser-known sides. ivie can also be used to purchase the Vienna City Card and the newly launched Vienna City Card Experience Edition.

As part of its efforts to maintain close ties with international travelers as well as its travel industry and media partners, the Vienna Tourist Board broadcasts various highlights relating to the city in specially produced online formats.

One such example, the Vienna Showcase live stream series, took the organization’s dialog marketing and stakeholder management activities in a whole new direction: in 2020, selected media and travel industry representatives were given an opportunity to immerse themselves in the capital’s cultural landscape in the course of three live broadcasts, which also featured Q&A sessions. The pilot episode for the Chinese market, broadcast from the Leopold Museum on July 30, was followed by a further two instalments for audiences worldwide: a live broadcast from the “Beethoven moves” exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum on October 5, and a panel discussion live from the Sigmund Freud Museum on December 4. The series will continue in 2021 with new episodes. Each episode is exclusively previewed to the international press and travel industry, and also shown in a B2C cut. In total, Vienna Showcase generated more than 8,800 contacts in 2020.

The Vienna Tourist Board hosted a series of regular live walks on its Instagram channel for international travelers unable to make the trip to the city. Each Vienna/NOW Live Walk focused on a different topic – from the tucked-away courtyards of the first district to the highlights of the MuseumsQuartier and Christmas vibes in the historic city center. All of the Insta walks are available on demand on Instagram TV (IGTV). Like Vienna Showcase, this series will continue in 2021. The 2020 tours generated more than 81,000 views.

The 13 different language versions of the wien.info website were kept up to date throughout 2020. The German version of the site contained around 1,900 editorial articles about Vienna and provided additional information on some 3,250 locations in the city. Additional features including an online booking service for around 300 of the capital’s accommodations, a comprehensive event database, detailed information on key sights and customizable travel itineraries complete the picture.

Although the coronavirus pandemic led to a significant drop in traffic on the B2C site, wien.info still notched up more than 5 million users in 2020. More than 13 million page views were recorded during the year. To maintain the website’s impressive reach, regular search engine optimization activities were carried out in 17 countries.

The Vienna Tourist Board’s B2B websites – b2b.vienna.info, vec.vienna.info, vienna.convention.at and photo.vienna.info – registered a total of more than 264,000 unique users and around 720,000 page views. The b2b.wien.info site saw a 13% increase in users to 195,000, in spite of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Vienna Tourist Board reached more than a million followers through its B2C channels in 2020, and more than 118,100,000 users in total. This equates to an 11% year-on-year increase, despite the global pandemic. The Vienna Tourist Board’s German and English Facebook pages had a combined total of more than 620,000 fans. Its videos on YouTube racked up more than 15 million views and its Instagram channel had around 250,000 followers (up 57%). Live tours were offered on its Instagram page for the first time in 2020. The vienna.info pinterest channel likewise increased its reach in 2020, to more than 2.9 million.

In China, the Vienna Tourist Board is active on Weibo (around 140,000 followers, up 33%) and the Miaopai video channel. It also has a WeChat service account (5,167 followers, up 45%).

The Vienna Tourist Board’s two B2B Twitter accounts (in German and English) had more than 23,000 followers at the end of 2020. The two LinkedIn channels posted significant increases in the number of followers, to 4,737 (WienTourismus) and 3,809 (Vienna Convention Bureau) respectively. This brought the total number of B2B followers in 2020 to more than 32,500 (up 5,800 on a year earlier). 

Usually sent out around once a month, the German and English versions of the Vienna Tourist Board B2C newsletter keep fans all over the world up to speed on the latest that Vienna has to offer. In 2020, a combined total of 20 German and English issues of the newsletter were sent to 52,200 recipients worldwide. All told, around 626,000 copies of the newsletter were sent out during the year.

With the B2B newsletter (in German language) the Vienna Tourist Board informs the business of the Vienna Visitor Economy about current developments and relevant news. The frequency of publication was increased from once a month to approximately every 14 days at the beginning of the Corona crisis. In 2020, a total of 29 industry newsletters were sent to around 1,500 subscribers.