Activities 2019

The Vienna Tourist Board is the only City of Vienna entity to be active in 19 incoming markets, which together accounted for around 80% of all overnights and revenue in 2019. On average, it organized an event every second day for international media, the travel industry or the meeting industry.

The markets cultivated by the Vienna Tourist Board

Bednights, room revenues and market shares, 01-12 2019 compared to 2018, all types of accommodation

Vienna Convention Bureau

The Vienna Convention Bureau (VCB) – active worldwide in the acquisition of congresses and meetings – organized 15 Sales Calls and represented the meeting destination at 38 specialist workshops and fairs including IMEX Frankfurt and Las Vegas as well as IBTM World Barcelona. At these events, the VCB was in contact with 1,062 organizers of congresses and events. In Vienna it accompanied 38 site inspections with 92 customers and organized and supported 19 famtrips involving 279 participants. In total, the VCB team came into direct contact with 1,433 individual event planners.

Vienna in the international travel market

Responsible for making sure Vienna is represented in the international travel industry’s offerings, the Market Management department recorded 81 business trips to 29 countries in 2019 . On its travels, it flew the flag for Vienna at ten trade and public fairs, 57 travel industry workshops and 62 special presentations. The department also organized the Viennese travel industry’s participation in many of these events. It also welcomed and looked after 724 travel industry representatives from 27 countries.

International headlines

In 2019, the Media Management department hosted a total of 984 journalists and influencers who traveled to the city from 43 countries, supporting them in finding out all about Vienna and helping to organize their itineraries. This included 498 representatives of the print and online media, 37 TV teams, 7 radio teams and 224 influencers and bloggers. It also organized 55 press conferences in 17 countries. In all, media relations activities by the Vienna Tourist Board resulted in around 3,500 reports in 2019.

The Vienna Tourist Board in the media

Austrian print and online media, TV and radio channels published and broadcast more than 1,500 reports on the work of the Vienna Tourist Board and tourism industry developments in the city. A total of 53 press releases, five press conferences and numerous interviews and comments provided the foundation for the reports.

Online presence and digital marketing

The 13-language B2C website vienna.info contains around 1,900 articles and details of 3,250 locations in the city. In 2019 it reported 728,500 unique users and 2.48 million page views per month. The Vienna Tourist Board’s B2B channels – b2b.vienna.info, vec.vienna.info, vienna.convention.at and photo.vienna.info – registered an average of 22,400 unique users and 76,700 page views each month. At year end 2019, the Vienna Tourist Board’s four Facebook pages had a combined total of more than 635,000 fans, and its two Twitter accounts had over 22,200 followers. The Vienna Tourist Board Instagram channel has around 200,000 followers (up 58% on 2018) and its YouTube videos have been viewed more than 7.5 million times. A concerted drive has seen the Vienna Tourist Board’s followers on Weibo almost double, to around 100,000. It joined Weibo’s video platform Miaopai in July. The Vienna Tourist Board presence on Chinese super app WeChat is another new development.

Digital marketing highlights included the VIENNA/NOW YouTube campaign which has been extended to include Sights as a new format. In the series, host Adia Trischler takes visitors to her personal highlights in the city, shares interesting background stories and offers practical insights such as how to reach the locations by public transport. In June, Instagram user @paperboyo reimagined various Viennese landmarks including the Donauturm, DC1 Tower and Gasometers in his signature paper cutouts. Watch the making-of video.

Marketing Cooperations

To help leverage synergies to their mutual advantage, the Vienna Tourist Board and its strategic partner Austrian Airlines collaborate closely on marketing. A wide-ranging cooperation deal was renewed in 2019. The partnership comprises digital and traditional marketing activities as well as campaigns and cooperation projects with flight booking and travel portals. The online campaigns generated more than 278 million impressions and 359,000 clicks. Out-of-home advertising was booked in China and joint print ads placed in 11 million newspaper copies in China and Japan. Smaller scale marketing co-operation projects are also in place with other partners such as the Austrian National Tourist Board and organizers of large-scale events in Vienna (the Danube Island Festival, Vienna City Marathon, Vienna Design Week etc.).

From Videos to Print ads

The Image & Video Production team was responsible creating around 50 videos and more than 600 images of Vienna in 2019. Around 200 promotional materials (brochures, posters, leaflets) that define Vienna’s image in markets worldwide were produced in 17 languages in 2019, with about seven million copies published in total, including the 24-page Vienna Journal which is printed in eight languages each fall and has a total print run of 190,000. 3.2 million copies of the Vienna city map, which includes information on the city’s sights, were published in 11 languages. Various giveaways branded in line with the Vienna Tourist Board’s advertising concept were produced and used in overseas promotions.

Services for Visitors

Around 850,000 visitors used the services on offer at the tourist information center on Albertinaplatz (consultation, self-service, ticket desk), around half of whom received face-to-face support. A further 100,000 visitors attended the tourist information center at Hauptbahnhof. The new welcome point at Vienna International Airport was visited by more than 100,000 people. In total, staff at the three tourist information centers in Vienna provided face-to-face services for 650,000 visitors in ten languages, and handed out brochures in 17 languages. From Easter to mid-September, Vienna Tourist Board employees ran a pair of mobile tourist information offices (Vienna-branded cargo bikes) along various routes outside the first district. The team provided tips related to the local area and information on the city to approximately 10,000 visitors at 12 locations. The Vienna Hotels & Info team fielded 23,000 telephone, e-mail and social media enquiries in 2019.

Vienna City Card

The travel card for Vienna was relaunched in April 2019 to include airport transfer and hop-on, hop-off-tour variants, in addition to unlimited travel on the Wiener Linien public transportation network. Optional modules can be chosen to supplement the basic variant that comes with unlimited travel on the network operated by Wiener Linien. The airport transfer ticket is valid on all public transport services that connect the city with Vienna International Airport by rail or bus: the City Airport Train, the ÖBB Railjet, the S7 Schnellbahn rapid transit line and Vienna Airport Lines buses. Two children aged 14 or under travel free. The Vienna City Card gives holders access to more than 200 discounts and concessions at sights and museums as well as LGBT offers, in a new feature launched to coincide with EuroPride 2019. It can be purchased from the tourist information centers, Wiener Linien sales points or from the online store at www.viennacitycard.at, and is available as an app.

Vienna Experts Club (International)

The Vienna Experts Club International is a customer loyalty program for the global travel industry. It has around 20,000 members in about 80 countries. In 2019, around 1,700 of them made use of the advantages available to members during a visit to Vienna, experiencing what Vienna has to offer them and, in turn, their customers at first hand. The local Vienna Experts Club is a free training program for employees of hotels in Vienna and incoming travel agents to help deepen their understanding of Vienna as a product on the tourism market. Once again in 2019, the club office organized at least one exclusive event each month (except in July) alongside mandatory initial and refresher training for its 800 members.

Vienna Tourism Conference

As a highlight of the tourism conference on October 22, Director of Tourism Norbert Kettner presented the city’s 2025 Visitor Economy Strategy to about 500 guests at Metastadt Vienna. Before unveiling the strategy, he talked about the development of tourism in the city and presented the latest indicators and marketing activities. Guest speaker Joan Clos, former mayor of Barcelona, gave a talk about the transformation of the Catalonian city from ailing industrial town to booming tourist destination. This year’s Vienna Tourism Conference was themed “The city as an organism – Concentrated. Hybrid. Theatrical.’