The number of tourism organizations using Twitter continues to grow, although at a slower pace. We are now tracking over 350 tourism organizations, some more have been brought to our attention after this June 30th snapshot. Most major destinations have now established a presence but some big ones are still missing.

Where are California or Boston for example? They have registered an account to protect their name and brand but are not using the accounts.

Did they miss the boat or are they just smarter than anybody else? What are tourism organizations getting out of Twitter? Some organizations have stopped using Twitter and shut down their accounts. Others are posting less often (and spending less time on Twitter).

In our ranking through Twitter Grader the top 4 positions remain unchanged but @nycgo picked up over 2,000 new followers in June to know rank Nr. 5. At the end of June six destinations had more than 5,000 followers. It seems that at least some DMOs are getting a good return for their time spend on Twitter.

Kissimmee became the latest destination to launch an official “Twisitor Center” where visitors can use Twitter to ask travel related questions and get answers in real time. And while they are not the first to use Twitter in this form as a tool for customer service, they still got good PR for it. Which proves that Twitter still has a buzz-factor that can be used for public relations work.

But at the same time a lot of organizations seem to be putting a lot of time into Twitter (measured by number of updates) without getting that much traction. It does not seem unlikely that over the next months more accounts will be shut down.

So what are your thoughts on this? Are you having success with your destination Twitter account? If so, how do measure the success? What do you think will the future hold for tourism and Twitter?