DC travel office to partner with WeChat

Destination DC, the official destination marketing organization for Washington, will be the first such organization to officially partner with China's WeChat.

"By expanding our partnership with WeChat, we are able to communicate with potential Chinese visitors on the platform they use most," Elliott L. Ferguson II, president and CEO of DDC, said in a press release on Tuesday. "We can also enhance the visitor experience for more than 300,000 Chinese travelers who visit Washington DC every year."

The WeChat messaging and social media service, launched by Tencent in 2011, has been called China's "app for everything" because of its wide range of functions and platforms. It is one of the world's largest standalone mobile apps in number of monthly active users, with more than 1 billion, according to a report on Technode in March.

"We are excited to work with Destination DC," said Juliet Zhu, head of WeChat marketing. "We appreciate their commitment to Chinese travelers and look forward to facilitating their engagement with our users on WeChat."

DDC will continue to grow Welcome China, a certification program for its members looking to cater to Chinese travelers.

Hotels, restaurants, attractions, transportation companies, sightseeing and retail members who participate in the Welcome China program learn about Chinese customs and resources to make Chinese leisure and business visitors feel at home in the nation's capital.

WeChat will assist DDC members in creating their official accounts and grow into its other services, including the WeChat Mini Program, WeChat Pay and advertisements.

DDC's WeChat account recorded the highest traffic growth among US cities on WeChat in 2016.

As of July 2017, Washington became the top US destination on the mobile app, the press release said.

"The Chinese market has been the largest inbound international market coming to Washington since 2013," Ferguson said in a previous interview with China Daily.

China has become Washington's No. 1 overseas market, growing 103 percent since 2010.

About 221,000 people visited Washington from China in 2014, according to the US National Travel & Tourism Office. Visitation from China to the US is forecast to increase 129 percent between 2014 and 2020 — which would add 2.83 million more visitors by 2020, according to Travel Market Insights, a travel data service based in Willsboro, New York, and the tourism office.

In 2016, one in every 10 Chinese travelers to the US visited Washington, an increase of 75 percent from 2013, according to Travel Market Insights.