Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority (TCA Abu Dhabi) has received hits in excess of 1.3 million for its upgraded destination website visitabudhabi.ae within six months of its relaunch.

While the number of visits increased 27 per cent compared to the second half of 2011, the number of unique visitors increased 21 per cent and the number of pageviews 47 per cent. The average visit duration rose 34 per cent.

The total number of visitabudhabi.ae hotel searches generated in Q3 and Q4 last year was over 69,000, with the number of leads to online travel agents (OTAs) and hotel booking engines reaching over 16,900 with a conversion rate of almost a quarter. Restaurants searches came in at over 115,000.

Since last October’s launch of the site’s flight and car search e-services, over 2,000 flights were searched, generating 431 OTA and airline leads, while 126 car searches were logged.

Visitabudhabi.ae went social in September last year since when the destination has been successfully portrayed, promoted and talked about on social media channels, reaching a total Facebook audience of more than 19 million and generating over 147,883 ‘stories’, such as likes, posts, comments and shares.

Focusing on a multiple-tier digital and social media campaign - pre-event promotion, post event sharing, destination presentation, celebrity activation and competitions, visitabudhabi.ae reached a total Facebook fan base of about 90,000 and its target of 30,000 Twitter followers by the end of 2012.

The destination website’s relaunch has involved significant content upgrades including 3,000 new images and 150,000 newly-written, Web-friendly content in eight languages (English, Arabic, French, German, Italian, Russian, Japanese and Chinese).

New services include the integrated hotel-flight-car search, a comprehensive F&B search, online maps, and enhanced user interface with usability and accessibility as top priorities.

Following consolidated search engine optimisation, the website is highly ranked by Google generating 75 per cent of its traffic from search engines. Visitabudhabi.ae’s monthly e-newsletter, with open and click-through rates above the industry average, now circulates to 20,000 verified email recipients.

More digital enhancements in the coming months include iPhone and iPad app, spa & relaxation pages, new hotel pages and additional social media channels and applications. – TradeArabia News Service