Eurostar's first attempt to target directly the Chinese market notched up 50 million views on Weibo within ten weeks, quite a result seeing as its actual passenger numbers for 2013 came in at 10 million.
Equating these 50 million views to actual paying passengers is tenuous to say the least, but indicates the scale and potential of the Chinese outbound market for European operators.
The dedicated campaign aimed at the Chinese market was run in conjunction with the micro-blogging site Weibo.
The competition was launched this September as part of the Eurostar Stories initiative. The idea was to get Chinese students in London and Paris to shoot short videos highlighting what they liked about the cities and post them onto Weibo.
The ten videos receiving the most votes from Weibo users were then worked up into longer productions and reposted back to Weibo and also onto a dedicated Chinese-lanaguage micro-site, www.eurostar-stories.com, where more voting took place.
In total, the campaign viewed more than 50 million Weibo users in China, Eurostar claims.
Here's the winning video for London, focussing on Bankside.
http://www.eurostar-stories.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/No5-Fangyuan-Zhuang1.mp4
And here's the most popular depiction of Paris, highlighting the Champs-Élysées.
http://www.eurostar-stories.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/No3-Ruozhu-Wang1.mp4
All the shortlisted videos can be seen at www.eurostar-stories.com.