Q1 2026 Weibo Rankings Report

Dragon Trail International’s Weibo Rankings Report tracks and analyzes performance for national tourism organizations (NTOs), destination marketing organizations (DMOs), airlines, airports, cruise lines, museums & attractions, and hotels. Our quarterly Weibo reports build industry benchmarks and uncover best practices in digital marketing in the travel sector.

Formal partnerships with celebrities – including actors, singers, and athletes – delivered significant engagement boosts to Weibo accounts across multiple categories in Q1 2026. Additionally, video content dominated the most-liked posts for most categories as well. Our analysis also reveals the strong potential for destinations to benefit from the buzz around live performances by popular musicians, and the sustained efficacy of giveaways to boost engagement. The Attractions and Museums category offers a few alternative examples of content strategies that can deliver sustained engagement as well as stimulate UGC.

NTOs

There are lots of changes to the list of top NTOs ranked by total engagement on Weibo in Q1 2026, compared to 2025. Ireland, Switzerland, Germany, and Canada all moved up the rankings quite significantly – Canada most of all, ranked 2nd this quarter, up from 24th in 2025. Destination Canada not only increased its posting volume by more than five times compared to the same period last year, but also partnered with Conde Nast Traveler and Chinese actor Yang Yang for a video series shot in Canada and an offline event in Beijing that drew hundreds of thousands of social media engagements.

Another account that got a big boost this quarter is the German National Tourist Board, moving from 14th place in 2025 to 3rd. Germany’s most engaging posts introduced different cities in Germany where Chinese table tennis star Fan Zhendong has been playing over the past few months – Fan is currently competing on behalf of a German club and touring the country.

Ranked 1st among national tourism boards in Q1 is Singapore, up from 3rd place last year. Singapore’s celebrity partnership is with actor and singer Dylan Wang, who stars in a video series for the tourism board, visiting sites around Singapore and engaging with local culture – for example, through a cooking challenge with a Singaporean chef.

DMOs

Surprisingly ranked in 2nd place among DMOs in Q1 – up from 27th place in 2025 – is Washington DC. This high engagement number and rate was mostly driven by just one post, promoting “An Evening with Kun,” a performance by a Chinese pop artist, and introducing the history of the Howard Theatre where the show took place.

Less surprising is Hong Kong at the top of the DMO rankings, another city that drew Weibo user engagement this quarter because of a concert. Hong Kong Tourism Board published videos featuring singer Zhou Shen, who visited Hong Kong as part of his world tour.

Abu Dhabi continued to generate strong user engagement in Q1 through its partnership with brand ambassador Liu Yifei, who promoted a Chinese New Year red envelope giveaway in the emirate’s top post. Meanwhile, Cannes ranked 4th with a post featuring actors Yu Shi and Zhou Yiran on the Cannes red carpet promoting their 2024 TV series “To the Wonder”; and Vienna rose up the rankings from 15th to 8th with a monthly giveaway.

Airlines

AirAsia usually ranks 1st among international airlines on Weibo for total engagements, but the airline’s performance in Q1 2026 stands out even more than normally because of its very high engagement rate – 4.88%, compared to 0.62% in Q1 2025. AirAsia’s top posts all related to their partnership with singer Bo Yuan, who was revealed as the brand’s new CTO (“Chief Travel Officer”) and the star of a vlog series on travel to Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand.

All Nippon Airways generated engagement with giveaways, while Emirates’ posts about Middle Eastern airspace closure and flight cancellations drew attention. Up from 16th place in 2025 to 5th in Q1 2026, Turkish Airlines drew positive engagement for a promotion with its brand ambassador, Chinese tennis player Zheng Qinwen. However, Turkish Airlines’ high Weibo engagement level also resulted from a number of angry comments about the brand’s use of the phrase “Lunar New Year” instead of “Chinese New Year” in English-language materials – a linguistic choice that usually sparks anger against at least one tourism brand on Weibo every year. Singapore Airlines’ account also performed well this quarter, with “Craftsmanship Series” behind-the-scenes videos about the airline’s operations.

Airports

Generally speaking, user engagement with international airport content on Weibo is fairly low. Looking at the overall engagement rate and numbers for the quarter, it looks as if Hong Kong International Airport is the exception to this – but even for Hong Kong, these strong results come from just one of their Weibo posts, a video featuring celebrity Jackson Wang. Hong Kong International Airport’s other top posts – which don’t even come close to the Jackson Wang one for results – include video guides to checking in and traveling through the airport, and giveaways for the New Year and Chinese New Year.

Ranked 2nd, Paris Airports produced an extraordinary video featuring their Chinese Friendly Passenger Experience Officer, Julien Gaudfroy. Speaking immaculate Mandarin and wearing traditional Chinese clothes, Gaudfroy moves through Charles de Gaulle Airport, engaging in Chinese New Year celebrations and showing off Chinese-friendly features like Chinese signage and mobile payment options.

Cruise Lines

As usual, cruise lines generated the least user engagement of any of the tourism categories we track on Weibo – in contrast to WeChat, for example, where cruise lines attract some of the highest average reading rates. The cruise line post with the most engagement for the quarter came from Princess Cruises, with just six likes and 18 comments for a Chinese New Year giveaway. Ranked 2nd, Viking Cruises received four likes and no other engagements for its own Chinese New Year giveaway.

Attractions and Museums

The Attractions and Museums category is an interesting one, because it provides a few good examples of accounts that are performing well on Weibo without relying on celebrity partnerships and giveaways. We also see the strength of Paris-area attractions, with the Louvre, Disneyland Paris, and Chateau de Versailles ranked 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, after Hong Kong Disneyland.

The most-liked attraction post of the quarter came from Disneyland Paris, a Chinese New Year video that featured local park staff welcoming visitors in French, with Chinese subtitles. Hong Kong Disneyland’s most popular post was a video promoting an offline campaign where various street signs around Hong Kong featured additions from Disneyland. The park encouraged Weibo users to look out for these signs as they explored Hong Kong and to share their photos online. The next most popular post by Disneyland Hong Kong was a video with Hong Kong actress Joey Yung, who voiced one of the main characters in the Cantonese-language version of Zootopia 2.

Meanwhile, the Louvre’s Weibo content strategy is quite unlike other popular accounts, but still works very well – the museum sticks to dense, serious, extremely informational photo-and-text posts about items from its collection and architectural features of the museum itself. The most popular in Q1 was a discussion of female beauty standards through the lens of a 19th century painting. Another recommended that users visit a statue on loan from the Louvre to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Photos of Versailles in the snow were also very popular among Weibo users this quarter.

Hotels  

Bulgari topped the hotel rankings in the first quarter, with a mixed content strategy with short videos and photos promoting its overseas and domestic properties. Top posts included a video of a tea ceremony in Tokyo, a video of a penthouse suite in Paris, photos of cocktails in Beijing, and a video featuring celebrities attending the Spring Festival Art Gala event in Beijing.

Meanwhile, Marina Bay Sands continues to generate buzz with celebrity engagement – the hotel got two actors from the Tang Dynasty Mystery Tales television series to record Chinese New Year greetings, and also published a video of actress Guan Xiaotong’s photo shoot for Rayli Magazine at the hotel.