Tourism Twitter Ranking June 09
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?
July 12th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Joined several weeks ago and am enjoying the mental exercise thoroughly. Funny thing, however, I am in tourism–been in it for years–but certainly do not use Twitter as a springboard to use tourism commercially. Find myself rhyming most of the time, which I find a bit odd since I have never created rhymes or poetry before. Find the inane raunchy slurs of some entries rather ridiculous–more like little children striving for attention. Easy to bypass and overlook. PLEASE NOTE: Haven’t been able to post for about a week–ever since I upgraded to the new Google format, Twitter has denied me access as “changabang” (said it was already “in use”–Hey! That’s me). May I please have access to Twitter again as “changabang”????? Beaucoup thanks…… Jeanne Gay
July 12th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
Since I have only been Tweeting and Twittering for about a week, the rankings haven’t impacted on me as yet. I didn’t recognize any of the Twitter names that I scrolled through. My strongest impression is that most of them seemed to be commercial establishments in the field of tourism. This smacks a good deal like using Twitter as a marketing tool and taking advantage of an innocent joy.
July 14th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Ugh! @VisitMesa’s Account was hijacked this month leading to a huge slide in our rankings and more importantly driving traffic to our site! Oh well, we’re back up and running.
July 17th, 2009 at 8:21 am
@discover_LA really appreciates the efforts of GoSeeTell. LA INC. The Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau would love to collaborate on research (traction, trends, etc.). This network needs more visibility in the DMO/CVB world.
Bill Karz
wkarz@lainc.us
July 21st, 2009 at 10:21 am
California is actually at @CATourism…no one knows what @VisitCalifornia is.
July 21st, 2009 at 3:25 pm
I second Brooke’s comment…the GoSeeTell intern that is updating this list may want to take a closer look at @MendocinoCounty, @GoToBakersfield, @BarbinIL, @MarylandTrip, @LansingCVB, @visitbigrapids, and many other questionable accounts that may lead people to the wrong conclusion.
I mean, @MarshallMN and @SpaChick aren’t even DMOs.
July 29th, 2009 at 7:55 am
[...] A quick recommendation here. If you are starting a Twitter campaign, tweet or DM our peers at any one of these CVBs / DMOs and ask them how they are managing their campaign. Clearly, something is resonating with the 8000+ followers of @TravelPortland and I am sure that Tressia (sorry to put you on the spot Tressia) would be happy to share some (not all!) of their secrets to success. http://www.goseetell.com/ [...]
July 29th, 2009 at 9:22 am
Interesting that it picked up our old name @WMTA1917 which was changed months ago to @westmichtourist. Being an account no longer even on twitter of course it would come up with no stats!
July 31st, 2009 at 5:28 am
Hey Jeanne Gray – I smack of using Twitter as a marketing tool. I spend an hour a day in the office working the social media side of business. There is nothing wrong with that.
I also study the vehicle to try to add value to my CVB clients. Twitter doesn’t seem to work very well for any single entity. I feel the way to ad impact or SALES to the equation is to add partners on the tweets. Destinations that work with other business operators in unison are giving me very positive reports. I mean the CVB says we are great, the local restaurants say we are serving great food and the local fising charters say the fish are biting.
NOTE to PA I saw that you had tweeted an activity with a phone number so I called it and left a messagew – I got no call back. Whats that about?
I have been tweeting for 4 months. Until I got 400 followeres I seemed dead in thew water now I get 10 to 25 followers a day.
I use twitter and LinkedIn to drive traffic to my blog http://touristtracker.blogspot.com/
Th
July 31st, 2009 at 5:32 am
Sorry hit enter!!!!!
My blog traffic is just this week starting to improve so I don’t think Twitter can take much credit.
All in all this stuff is a ton of work. I am wildly enthused about the opportunity.
Please feel free to follow me on Twitter as touristtracker or connect on LinkedIn. I really want to learn this better.
July 31st, 2009 at 2:17 pm
We are seeing some great results from Twitter. Its now become one of the top referrals of users to our website, even though we rarely post links to our site in our tweets. However, as important as quantitative results are, we began using Twitter as a way to begin conversations with consumers – to hear what they think, what they are looking for, and for information on their experiences. For that qualitative info, its great.
As for the rankings, I’ve noticed that our handle is noted incorrectly and does not reflect our true number of followers. Can that be fixed? Our correct Twitter handle is @VisitLoudoun (not Visit_Loudoun). We have more than 700 followers, not the 100 some that’s noted in the June report. Also, we have a secondary Twitter account, @DCsWineCountry, that is targeted to consumers interested in Loudoun’s culinary experiences, and that has nearly 1,500 followers, but it is not included on the list. Can you add that? Thanks!!
The blog is great, by the way. Keep up the good work.