In spite of the ongoing coronavirus crisis, the Vienna Tourist Board successfully maintained the consistently high reach of its B2C social media channels (Facebook and Instagram) in 2021, and even managed to increase reach and follower numbers for its B2B channels (LinkedIn and Twitter).
Vienna Tourist Board digital channels
ivie Destination App:
Launched in 2020, the ivie app established itself as the channel with the greatest reach in 2021. In 2021, the Vienna Tourist Board continued to develop it, adding a new feature that indicates how busy the individual sights and attractions are in real time. The internal navigation and map view were also optimized to help improve the overall user experience. As of December 31, 2021 the city guide app covered more than 1,100 locations, including 870 hospitality entries and nine walks. Facts and figures – and in some cases out-of-the-ordinary stories – bring the individual entries to life, helping visitors connect with some of Vienna’s lesser-known sides. The ivie app can also be used to purchase Vienna City Card variants. In 2021, ivie was downloaded more than 74,000 times and had over 88,000 users. Since its launch, the number of downloads has risen to around 110,000.
ivie’s successful development earned the app national and international recognition in 2021. At the webAD of the interactive advertising bureau austria (IAB), the most important award of the Austrian digital economy, Vienna Tourist Board won gold for ivie in the category "Best Website, App & E-Commerce". As indicated by the category name, ivie prevailed not only against other apps, but also against other websites and online stores.. ivie also was awarded gold at the 2022 Annual Multimedia Award (presented in October 2021), in the category “Digital Services”.
Social Media
The Vienna Tourist Board reached more than 1.2 million followers through its B2B and B2C channels in 2021 (up 10%), and recorded 626,100,000 impressions in total. Equating to a jump of 430% year on year, the rise in impressions is attributable to increased advertising measures and the use of features designed to drive reach, such as Instagram Reels and live formats. The Vienna Tourist Board’s German and English Facebook pages had a combined total of more than 650,000 fans (up 5%). Its videos on YouTube achieved around 25 million views and its Instagram channel had around 285,000 followers (up 15%). As a broadcaster, the Vienna Tourist Board hosted eight live city walks on Instagram in 2021, which together contributed 116,500 impressions. Use of the pinterest channel launched in 2021 increased hugely, generating more than 111 million impressions (up 3,700%).
In China, the Vienna Tourist Board is active on Weibo (around 167,000 followers) and the Miaopai video channel. It also has a WeChat service account (31,000 followers). Follower numbers for the WeChat channel were up more than sixfold on the previous year. The Weibo account recorded another year-on-year increase, of 19.2%. The Vienna Tourist Board Weibo channel regularly makes Weibo parent company Sina’s list of the most influential tourism accounts: in September 2021 it ranked 6th, 13th in August and 7th in July.
The Vienna Tourist Board’s two B2B Twitter accounts (in German and English) had more than 24,300 followers at the end of 2021. The Vienna Tourist Board (7,500 followers) and the Vienna Convention Bureau (4,700 followers) LinkedIn channels each saw significant increases in follower numbers. This brought the total number of B2B followers in 2021 to more than 36,900 (up 14% on a year earlier).
B2C AND B2B WEBSITES
The Vienna Tourist Board operates an extensive website, both for visitors and a range of different B2B target audiences. The vienna.info B2C website was kept up to date in 12 different languages throughout 2021. The German version of the site alone contained around 1,400 editorial articles about Vienna and provided additional information on some 3,100 locations in the city. Other features including an online booking service for 366 of Vienna’s accommodations, a comprehensive event database with several thousand entries, detailed information on key locations in the capital and customizable travel itineraries complete the picture.
Although the website’s reach and number of users was down on pre-pandemic levels, there was a significant increase in traffic in the second half of 2021, compared with the same period a year earlier. In 2021 vienna.info reached approximately 4.5 million users and recorded more than 12.2 million page views. To maintain the website’s impressive reach, regular search engine optimization work was carried out once again.
The Vienna Tourist Board’s B2B websites – b2b.vienna.info, vec.vienna.info, vienna.convention.at and photo.vienna.info – registered almost 170,000 unique users and around 488,000 page views.
B2C Newsletter
The German and English versions of the Vienna Tourist Board B2C newsletter keep fans all over the world up to speed on all the latest that Vienna has to offer. In 2021, a combined total of 20 issues of the newsletter (10 German and 10 English) were sent to around 52,000 recipients worldwide.
