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The Louvre, the world famous museum in central Paris, announced last Tuesday that it had opened accounts on Weibo.com and WeChat, the two most important social networks in China. Both accounts contain information on exhibits and activities and have a guide map in Chinese.

The Palace of Versailles, a royal chateau built in 1664 in a suburb of Paris, also announced last Tuesday that it opened a WeChat account. The palace’s history and information are available on WeChat in Chinese.famous site and service information in Chinese.

Le Centre des Monuments Nationaux (French National Centre for Monuments), which administrates almost 100 cultural monuments in France, has opened accounts on Chinese social networks, as has Musee d’Orsay, a museum with a huge collection of art works from the period spanning 1848 to 1914. Both hope a social media presence will expand their popularity in China.

In recent years, Chinese tourists have became the new favourites of French tourism institutes and companies, due to their increasing number and purchasing power. More and more tourist spots in France offer Chinese language service, and devote more effort to publicise China.

According to statistical data released by the Direction of the Museums of France in early 2015, the Louvre received 9.3 million visitors from throughout the world in 2014. Among them, the number of Chinese visitors was 474,000, second only to the number of visitors from the United States.

The data also shows a significant increase in Chinese tourists at the Palace of Versailles. Since January 1, 11 per cent of all visitors to the palace were from China.

In fact, tourism institutes in some countries like Japan and Australia have been advertising themselves through the Chinese social networks since 2014. Japan National Tourism Office (JNTO) has published 3,402 messages on Weibo.com, and counts 258,416 fans to date.

According to JNTO’s statistics, 2.4 million Chinese tourists visited Japan in 2014, an 83-per-cent growth over 2013. During this year’s Spring Festival, 359,000 Chinese tourists visited Japan, an increase of 59 percent over last year