Visit Seoul becomes first city tourism channel to hit 1 million YouTube subscribers

Gold Play Button earned nine years after Silver

1,888 videos uploaded, 1.4 billion views accumulated

Viewer engagement up 3.6 times, signaling qualitative growth

New content logs 150,000 total watch hours

Thumbnail for the "Seoul My Friend" series featuring Miyao [Seoul Tourism Foundation]

Seoul's official overseas tourism YouTube channel became the first among city tourism organizations worldwide to surpass 1 million subscribers, hitting the milestone Wednesday and setting a new benchmark for public destination marketing in the digital space.

Visit Seoul, launched in 2009 as the city's official international tourism promotion channel, has uploaded 1,888 videos and accumulated 1.4 billion views since its inception. The achievement comes nine years after the channel earned YouTube's Silver Play Button in October 2017 upon reaching 100,000 subscribers, and marks the first time any destination management organization (DMO) globally has reached the 1-million threshold.

The milestone reflects more than a raw subscriber count — both quantitative and qualitative indicators rose in tandem, including viewer-initiated engagement such as comments and likes, as well as total watch time.

The 88 new videos produced this year generated 165,000 viewer interactions — likes, comments and shares — representing a 3.6-fold increase in engagement rate compared with last year.

For long-form horizontal videos, the average view duration rose roughly threefold from last year to two minutes and 30 seconds. Total watch time for this year's new content reached 150,000 hours — equivalent to 15 years of continuous viewing by a single person.

Thumbnail for "Lovin' Seoul" [Seoul Tourism Foundation]

The milestone was driven largely by original intellectual-property content. "Seoul My Friend," a 66-episode series featuring four global idol groups, has racked up 4.27 million cumulative views, while "Lovin' Seoul," a 16-episode dating-concept series, ranked first in new subscriber conversion rate. Visit Seoul plans to use channel performance data to link video viewership with actual visits to the city, integrating the YouTube channel with its website and social media platforms.

Won Jong, head of the Seoul Tourism Foundation's international tourism and MICE division, said reaching 1 million YouTube subscribers ahead of any other city in the world "is proof of the strong global attention Seoul commands and the high potential for people to actually visit." He added that the foundation would continue producing content showcasing Seoul's diverse appeal "to motivate prospective tourists to visit and contribute to achieving 30 million international visitors."

terry@heraldcorp.com