The Polish Tourism Organisation created a special e-guide in the ecosystem of the Chinese WeChat app to make it easier for tourists from China to travel to Poland.

In order to make Poland more attractive, the POT International Office in Beijing launched a special Mini Programme called “Discover Poland” (探索波兰), designed to help Chinese tourists move around Poland with more ease. In recent years, Poland has enjoyed an ever-increasing popularity with Chinese tourists, while WeChat has become China’s most prominent social media app with more than a billion active users each month.

With the pandemic in the rearview, it is expected that it will be individual tourism the first to see a revival in China. Good quality materials providing tourist information on Poland are still hard to come by in China. The Mini Programme on WeChat will allow the POT International Office in Beijing to meet the existing demand and reach individual tourists by supporting them in a comprehensive preparation of their stay in Poland. This increases the likelihood of tourists spending more nights in our country and planning visits outside the established routes.

The Mini Programme is aimed at helping both individual travellers and representatives of the tourism industry organise trips to Poland. It contains a lot of practical information as well as interesting historical, geographical and cultural facts about the country.

The most important part of the Mini Programme is an extensive collection of points of interest (POIs) for tourist attractions, hotels, restaurants and shops, each with its own profile page containing photos, written introduction, contact information and opening hours. You can search them by category, but you can also find them using the interactive map in the Mini Programme, which gives you both a preview of the entire country and the ability to zoom in for a detailed city navigation. The names of the main destinations are written in both Chinese and Polish, making it easier to use the Programme, with the map filled with icons denoting the POIs, which can be opened with a single tap of your finger and easily saved in your favourite folder, making it easier to plan trips.

Profiles of cities bring together the most important places in Poland, while the section on routes contains different themes, around which visits to Poland can be planned. There are now eight routes available that visitors can choose depending on the time they have to spend in Poland. These include an eight-day tour of the main cities of Poland, a 14-day road trips as well as numerous two-day trips.

The detailed routes, information on destinations and a list of POIs can be helpful for both consumers and travel agencies when planning trips to Poland. With the tourist industry in mind, the Mini Programme has been equipped with a link to an e-learning platform with courses to educate local partners and present them the most attractive tourist offer of Poland. Other resources of the Mini Programme include live-streaming to give users a taste of their future visit to Poland and a collection of brochures about Poland to download. The Mini Programme also contains up-to-date weather and currency rates information. In the future, it is planned to launch a forum where users will be able to share their memories from their travels to Poland.

In the coming months, the database will be systematically updated with new items and more detailed information so that the e-guide is as up-to-date and interesting as possible for Chinese tourists.