With more than 963 million active users each month, WeChat
is the leading social media app in China.
Since the start of 2017, Chinese digital marketing agency
Dragon Trail Interactive has collected weekly data on how national tourism
offices, destination marketing organizations, airlines and cruise lines are
using WeChat to market their offerings to Chinese consumers.
Dragon Trail has now released a report analyzing its full-year
2017 data.
Topping the list for tourism offices is Destination Canada, which made
256 posts in the app that received a total of nearly 2.1 million views and more
than 10,000 likes.
Tourism New Zealand, which ranked fifth overall, had the top
post of the fourth quarter of 2017, an article titled “The colors of New
Zealand at the end of the year,” which garnered nearly 34,000 views by December
17.
The report notes that this post, which
showed viewers a colorful tour of New Zealand, aligns with a trend of popularity
for posts that include beautiful nature photography.
In the category of DMOs, three Asian organizations topped
the list: Hong Kong Tourism Board, Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing
and Macao Government Tourism Office.
Four North American accounts followed: Los Angeles
Tourism and Convention Board, the Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership,
British Columbia and Texas Tourism.
Hong Kong - a popular destination for Chinese
outbound tourists - attracts WeChat
users with its themed guides such as “Hong Kong with children” or guides to
Hong Kong street art or restaurants.
Air Asia is the predominant brand on WeChat in the airline
category. The carrier got more than seven million total views and an average of
more than 41,000 per post in 2017.
For cruise lines, the main Royal Caribbean International
account and a secondary one called Royal Caribbean International Deals topped
the list. Dragon Trail says most cruise line posts are sales promotions,
followed by articles about itineraries or facilities.
But counter to this, the most viewed cruise line post of
2017 was political in a nature: Royal Caribbean got 75,000 views for its announcement in March about cutting South Korean ports from its China cruises due to tensions between
the two countries over Seoul’s deployment of a U.S. missile defense system.