Our list of US/CA tourism organizations that have a presence on Twitter has grown to over 300. More than 70 destination accounts have over 1,000 followers. Here are the details (and as usual we used Twitter Grader on the last day of the month -in this case May 31st - for the ranking):

Since the end of May we found several new destinations using Twitter but as usual we rely on your feedback to complete our list.

We would also love to hear if anybody else is seeing Twitter and reactions from Twitter users change. If so, how?

We found over 100 new destinations on Twitter bringing the total to over 300. Thanks to @nathankam and his list of DMOs on Twitter - lots of destinations we had not been tracking.

Putting the list together is becoming a bigger and bigger project every month, with now over 300 accounts that have to be run through Twitter Grader it takes more than a day just to get the data (thanks to @allisonkpark for helping with this).

The month of April saw @BaltimoreMD returning to the top of the ranking again (no tattoo needed this time), @VisitChicago held it’s second spot. Both destinations have a high number of updates, besides followers an important factor in the Twitter grader algorithm.

(Disclosure as usual: we manage @TravelPortland and @OnlyinSF Twitter accounts and work with many other organizations on the list on social media projects).

Other major developments: @ExpCols launched a Twisitor Center using the hashtag #expcols. As you might know we are huge fans of using Twitter hashtags for visitor information and we hope more destinations will start using them. @iknowdenver just started on Twitter and is using not only one but four different hashtags to identify different information. You have to look at the Denver Twitter page on a web-browser to understand the concept as the information about it is embedded into the background of the page.

If you are still not convinced that using Twitter for visitor information is a good thing, consider this: the Twisitor Center we developed and operate for Travel Portland has generated media impressions worth over one million dollars. And that is just print, not counting social media like Twitter itself. @guykawasaki twittered about it and that tweet itself was re-tweeted multiple times reaching through this process almost half a million Twitter users.

So who else is in, who will be the next destination to use Twitter to identify and answer questions from visitors?

The whole idea started with a post on this blog about the need to engage with travelers while they are visiting a destination.

At the same time we were developing the social media strategy for  Travel Portland and were preparing to launch the @travelportland Twitter account. We were already having a very successful partnership with Travel Portland through the GoSeePortland portal which allows locals and visitors to share their personal Portland recommendations and tips. During a brainstorming session we were thinking about how Twitter could be used as an additional to GoSeePortland tool to answer questions from visitors about their trip to Portland. Using Twitter seemed to offer several advantages: Twitter was growing fast, it was easy to use on a mobile platform, it had a great and fast search function. But we did not want to be online 24/7 to answer questions of potential visitors. We needed a way to get more people involve - just as we do on GoSeePortland.com - and “crowd-source” the visitor information. And so the idea of the hashtag was born - tag Portland questions with a unique and somebody in the community would try to help.

Over the next weeks two things happened: Travel Portland educated its constituents and key stakeholders about the upcoming Twitter activities and we used the @travelportland account to test the hashtag concept. The first hashtag we tested (#obamapdx) was a failure and we did not get any traction. The second hashtag we tested (#pdx6) worked much better and we got great participation when we asked the @travelportland followers to describe Portland in six words on Twitter. After that we knew the “crowd-sourcing by hashtag” idea could work.

The next step was choosing the right hashtag for the “Twisitor Center”. The tag had to be short but distinct, should be about Portland and not Travel Portland, it had to explain what the whole concept was about and it should be relevant for visitors and locals alike. It might not look like it but a lot of thoughts went into choosing a “#inpdx” as the hashtag …

=> Learning: If we had to do it again we would probably choose an even more distinct hashtag, preferably one that will not be placed in tweets by people who do not know about the concept and use hashtags liberally, e.g. “Today the sun was shining #inpdx”.

After deciding on the hashtag we reached out to top users on GoSeePortland and Twitter users in Portland to run the idea by them and ask them for their support. Everybody who was on board. It helped tremendously that with GoSeePortland we already had a platform where Portland enthusiasts were already sharing their best kept secrets about the city.

=> Learning: If you plan a service that requires community participation you need to identify and reach out your “evangelists” early on. When asking other to participate you are also no longer in control - there is no way to limit recommendations e.g. only to members of a conventions & visitors bureau.

We were also pretty certain that we could get some good PR for Travel Portland if we played this right. To support the planned press release with social media components we shot a short video and uploaded it on YouTube, photos were added to a dedicated Flickr account. Travel Portland build a landing page on their website explaining the concept, incl. information about Twitter in general.

=> Learning: It was amazing to see how many blogs used the YouTube video or the Flickr photos when they wrote about the Twisitor Center. Makes sense - visuals make a blog post a lot more appealing.

The press release went out on February 9th, as of today more than 500 stories have been written about the Portland Twisitor Center - from India to Australia. It even made the local news. And non-travel publications like Venturebeat wrote about it, which made us at GoSeeTell very happy.

=> Learning: Twitter is hot, hot, hot - at least at the moment. Any good idea that involved Twitter will get you excellent press coverage. But that window of opportunity is closing, in a couple of month Twitter will probably be old news. So if you have a good idea, act now.

Last week Associated Press published an article about the Twisitor Center. AP content is used by  publications all over the world and more articles were published. Most interesting was that the SF Chronicle picked up the AP story and also published it on its website SFGate. The article was read by many top Twitter users in the Bay Area who then tweeted about it - for example @guykawasaki. Guy has over 100,000 followers and Guy’s tweet was re-tweeted many, many times. Our estimate is that his tweet and subsequent re-tweets (and re-re-tweets - you get the picture) reached over 500,000 Twitter users. I think nothing explains the power of Twitter better than this.

What next?

At the moment we get between 10 and 25 questions for the Twisitor Center per day. We try to answer as many as we can from the @travelportland account (which we manage for Travel Portland). But the real beauty is that for most questions people from the Portland community offer answers - and different perspectives - as well. The @travelportland Twitter account has grown to over 5,000 followers (to a large extend thanks to the many hours that @ariannap put into it) but also because of great local press coverage. That local coverage lead to more people actively monitoring the hashtag and as a result even better answers.

The roll-out of the Portland Twisitor Center was planned in four phases. Phase 1 was the preparation, phase 2 was the launch and we are now working on the phases 3 and 4 which will focus on integrating the Twisitor Center, content and participants into other web properties. Stay tuned for more updates!

And thank you to Travel Portland for being an unbelievable partner who is willing to push the envelop in order to make sure visitors to the city have the best possible time!

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We have developed TwisitorCenter.com to track all DMOs on Twitter. Just follow @twitisorcenter with your official destination account, we will follow back and your destination is automaticall added

http://www.twisitorcenter.com that lists all destinations that have an official Twitter presence.

If you have questions about how to build your own “Twisitor Center” let us know.

And if you have a hashtag or similar system for your destination, we want to hear about it. How did you go about it? What works, what does not?

Putting our monthly ranking of destinations on Twitter was slightly challenging this month as our trusted tool Twitter Grader was uncooperative and had significant down time. Usually we pull the data all on one day (the last day of the month) but because of the problems it took 3 days to get all data.

So, how many destinations in the US and Canada had a Twitter presence at the end of March 2009? We 24 new ones bringing the total we are tracking to 236 (new DMOs are marked in yellow).
We are probably missing some - let us know which ones.

24 tourism organizations now have more than 1,000 followers. Travel Portland added over 1,600 new followers as the buzz for the “Twisitor Center” continued.

And as usual we want to disclose that we work with several of the listed DMOs on various social media and social travel initiatives. Those DMOs are marked with a “*” behind their name.

In the Travel Guide section users can share travel tips, rate and review destinations, hotels, attractions etc., upload photos and discuss travel experiences in forums.

Features and design are typically Southwest – nothing edgy, no bells and whistles, nothing that we have not seen before, but a very, very solid execution. And Southwest is not afraid what customers have to say: the forum even includes a section where travel on Southwest can discussed – who needs Flyertalk.com.

So far the community is very thin on content and members – Southwest did obviously feel it was not necessary to create a lot of content in stealth mode before opening it to the public. And they are probably right because now that the site is live the content should grow pretty quickly.

Southwest joins a whole group of other airlines that have rolled out community / social networking sites but this takes the game to a new level and raises a lot of new questions.

A community of 100,000,000
Southwest Airlines had more than 100 million enplaned passengers in 2008.

That is a nice pool to tap into when you want to start a community. Obviously enplaned passengers are not unique passengers but even if Southwest has only 50 million unique passengers and manages to entice 1% of those to join the community will have 500,000 members. 5% would mean 2.5 million in the Southwest social network. This is a game changer when it comes to social travel websites.

Content screening
I could not resist to create some content and to my surprise it went live right away. No pre-screening or other delay. Of course content can be flagged by user but overall this is a bold move for a brand like Southwest. It will be interesting to see how the airline will handle self-promotions by hotels and restaurants through “reviews”. And as adding content requires only a registered profile but not entering a CAPTCHA code it is currently pretty easy to write a robot program and create spam messages. Not difficult to remove but still a pain.

Ancillary revenue
Southwest is not getting into the community business because they love social media so much. With their own community they can now do something they can not do on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr or any other social media sites they are currently using: they can make money. Not totally unimportant if you are an airline in these days.
How will they make the money? Look at this from a SEO perspective alone. Lots and lots of content will be created and the Google spider will come and visit over and over again. Search for a Las Vegas hotel review and you might see a Southwest Airlines Travel Guide instead of Tripadvisor. But wait, there is more! Take the traffic and monetize it with ads. But not just any ads – use the additional data you have collected about member interests during the sign-up process for some targeting. Your favorite destination is San Diego? Have a look at this – coincidentally a special deal from your hometown to Southern California. Oh the possibilities …

Pressure on airlines
The Southwest community is overall pretty unsophisticated as far as the features go: no good search engine, just simple Google maps, very few “social” tools to connect with other members etc. But the fact that Southwest as the social media leader in the airline space (Blog, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr) has decided to roll out a community – as simple as it is - adds significant pressure on other carriers to follow suit. Virgin Atlantic will roll out their Vtravelled community in June. They will not be the last.

Pressure on destinations and DMOs
Other airlines are not the only ones that will feel the pressure. As a Southwest customer I will soon be able to get travel insights and user-generated-content on Southwest.com. One less reason to go to a DMO (destination marketing organization) website. One more website the DMO has to screen to stay on top of what visitors are saying about the destination.
Overall social networking micro-sites are growing rapidly (this is just another example). Each of these travel-themed micro-sites makes online life for the DMO more complicated.

Consumers want to share and connect and if DMOs do not offer the right tools and the right content consumers will find it elsewhere. Southwest Airlines is a powerhouse when it comes to tourism marketing in the US. The content created on Southwest.com has the potential to shape travel decisions similar to what Tripadvisor has done for hotels. Few DMOs can afford to stand on the sideline while this is happening. They must – and will – offer consumers their own alternative for the content they are seeking – ratings, reviews, photos, videos etc.

February brought many changes to our ranking including a new Nr. 1: @BaltimoreMD put - literally - a lot of skin in the game, became the first destination with more than 3,000 followers and moved up to the top spot.

Congratulations to Tom and everybody else in Baltimore!

If you have not followed the “fail whale” tattoo story, you can read up on it here and also see a video of the “fail whale” finding it’s home on a nicely shaved leg. A must read for anybody who wants to see another great example of how to create a buzz with social media.

@VisitChicago and @TravelPortland (disclosure: we manage that account) also broke through 3,000 followers. @TravelPortland gained a lot more followers through the PR and attention created for the Portland Twisitor Center and @VisitChicago is just lucky to have somebody managing the account who really gets social media.

We will have a separate blog post later this week to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of trying to get as many followers as possible (a topic that has cause good debate in the past).

Overall we are now tracking more than 208 destinations in the US and Canada.

Here is the ranking for destinations as of February 28th. For some destinations grader did not return results so we estimated the grade (those grades are in italics).

As usual please let us know who we are missing, @anneh632 already found 5 new destinations on Twitter. Please keep them coming.

Also, if you destination is not yet listed on TwisitorCenter.com please follow the account so we can follow back and your destinations will show up on the map with destinations that twitter.

Highlights:

• We found 164 official Twitter accounts for destinations in the US & CA
• @VisitChicago is still the most followed DMO
• 10 organizations have over 1,000 followers
• Of the top 20, 3 accounts average more than 10 tweets per day (@ExpCols, @lehighvalleypa, @paadventure)
• All counts combined have over 36,000 followers and have posted over 22,000 updates.
• Combined the accounts we were tracking already in Dec 08 added more than 11,000 followers in January 09

As usual we used Twitter Grader to create the ranking. Changes in rank are for accounts we were already tracking in December 08, change is Jan 09 vs. Dec 08.

Three destinations appear to have stopped using Twitter: @TriValleyCVB, @SaultCVB and @WMTA1917.
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(Full disclosure: we work with Travel Portland on their social media strategy and are currently managing the Twitter account for @TravelPortland).

And a few brands are raising to the occasion and using their, shall we say assets, to gain attention in new, authentic and honest ways.  Whether or not you would deem these strategies effective or complete flops they are at the very least unexpected.

25 years and still red hot

The story and brand attributes of Virgin Atlantic are widely known, and that is precisely why this ad, celebrating what at times seemed like an impossible milestone, is so effective.  See for yourself:

Anniversary commercial

However, you do not have to take my word for it, Richard Branson, explains his airline’s success:

Who’d have thought 25 years ago that Virgin Atlantic would be the leading airline player it is today?

Now, we use 38 aircraft to fly six million people a year to 30 destinations around the world.

Our 9,000 staff have built an airline that, after 25 years, is still red hot; an airline that focuses on being the best, not the biggest, and injects customer service and innovation into its daily philosophy.

By emphasizing the same brand attributes that have engaged and intrigued audiences for 25 years, Virgin Atlantic created a spot that is both authentic and entertaining to consumers.

Philadelphia: a good sport with a sense of humor

All things considered it could have / should have been a really tough week for the great people of Philadelphia.

First of all their beloved Eagles lost to the Arizona Cardinals, which is rough enough, but to make matters worse their twitter account (@visitphilly) was forced to use a Cardinals logo as their avatar for the week.

This costume change was part of a friendly wager they engaged in with our friends at the Arizona Office of Tourism (@ArizonaTourism) prior to the game.  While this could have been a convenient time to take a Twitter time-out the account has been active all week, dressed as the Arizona mascot.

Then while minding their own business the City of Brotherly Love was the butt of some of political humorist, Jon Stewart’s jokes.

The original blog post is witty and well written; so there is no need for me to rewrite it for you, find all the details here.

Once again the city responded in stride, willing to let it go, but not before they got a couple of their own good-hearted digs out against Stewart. “Well, Jon, we’re used to this kind of thing and we know how to respond: Philadelphia, the city that bleeps you back.”

Proving that having a sense of humor and sharing your personality especially in the world of social media can only serve to boost your brand and inspire your enthusiasts to rally behind you.

No visitors, no problem

Ontario Tourism has created a contest that Algoma hopes will put it on the map.

The Great Ontario Outdoors Adventure of a Lifetime contest will hand out a week-long adventure for four through Algoma’s wilderness and along Lake Superior’s northeast shore.

And the big winner will be the area’s tourism industry, says the executive director of Ontario’s Algoma Country.

It is the lack of visitors, serene surroundings and available excursions that make Algoma the perfect location for this adventure seeker’s dream vacation. While it is yet to been seen if this promotion will be enough to put Algoma on the map, as they hope, the honesty regarding their tourism is refreshing.

Additionally, Ontario has turned what most deem as a negative, a lack of visitors, into the centerpiece of their promotion.  In the current economic climate there is no better time than the present to position negatives as positives.

Rather than try to recreate the wheel with your marketing efforts try using attributes, situations or even perceived weaknesses that your brand currently possesses and repackage them in new ways in order to gain attention and build authenticity.

What do you think, are there other great examples that we missed?  Please let us know.

Thank you to MPR529, Rubenstein and mike_miley for photos.

Tourism Queensland yesterday launched a big user-generated-content campaign: the Australian version of “Island Idol”. Visitors are invited to submit a casting video on www.islandreefjob.com and apply for the job of Island Caretaker in the Great Barrier Reef:

The Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef is a newly created position. There are a few minor tasks that need to be taken care of, but the most important duty is to report back to Tourism Queensland (and the world) and let us know what’s taking place on the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef.

The promotion was launched on a very nice (but flash heavy) microsite and supported by a very clever PR campaign.

Videos are submitted to the site but hosted on YouTube. About 30 videos have been submitted so far. Tourism Queensland will select 10 candidates and the public can select one wildcard candiate. All will be flown to Queensland where the final selection will be made. And one lucky winner will get to live in the Barrier Reef for 6 months and be paid to go sailing, snorkeling etc. and blog about it. Oh, the salary: A$150,000 for six months.

Another destination that launched a video contest today was Discover LA. For the launch of the new “That’s so LA” campaign consumers are asked to submit a video (or a photo) for a chance to win one of 5 LA weekends and $1,000 in cash. Videos are uploaded on the site and also hosted on DiscoverLA.com. Very few videos have been submitted but some of the ones that have been uploaded look like they might infringe on copyright for music used in the background (but then - I am not a lawyer.)

And the third destination to launch a YouTube video contest is CapeTown Tourism. The contest does not indicate whether it is the work of the official Capetown Tourism organization or somebody else. Users can submit a video to win 2 tickets on a cruise that departs on Feb 14th. Winners for the contest will be announced just 2 weeks before on Feb 2nd. Does not give the winner a lot of time to pack …

Overall thoughts:

The Tourism Queensland campaign is not cheap but beautifully executed. Great idea, great website, great YouTube integration, great PR. They will get their money’s worth, even with the high cost involved. By hosting the videos on YouTube Tourism Queensland minimizes the risk of copyright infringement plus benefits from the power of YouTube - the YouTube channel for the contest was the 4th most watched channel in Australia today. By hosting the videos themselves Discover LA misses out on the viral opportunities YouTube offers.

But YouTube alone is not the way to go as the Capetown contest shows. I challenge you to find the information about the rules and the prize on the site. Without a microsite to support it is hard to run a video contest on YouTube.

The biggest challenge for video contest is the high hurdle for engaging people. If you do not get a lot of people really excited about the idea and/or about the prize you will not get a lot of videos.

So don’t do a video contest it if you can not do it right.

Anybody wants to guess how many videos will be uploaded on
- Feb 2nd when the Capetown Tourism contest closes
- Feb 22nd (or earlier if more than 30,000 applications are received) for the Queensland contest
- June 1st, when the Discover LA contest closes?

Your thoughts on video contests in general?

Quite a few destinations therefore conduct follow-unfollow campaigns to grow the number of their friends.

But this is also time-consuming and has to be done right as Twitter will shut down accounts that have a big imbalance between followers and being-followed.

We use the followers/updates rating as a metric that we track each month for the accounts we manage. It tells us how successful we are in creating good content and in growing our following. We only looked at destinations that were on our list on Dec. 31st and had posted more than 10 updates.

Comparing these ratios between different accounts is not as meaningful when you look at them only as a snapshot and not as development over time.

Here is how to read this: WilliamsportPA twittered 10 times and got 219 followers. GoRockford on the other hand twittered 264 times and had on 12/31 only 71 followers. The ExpCol account that is fed by an RSS sent 1863 updates and had 705 followers. Paadventure has more followers and got there with only 221 updates.
(Full disclosure: we are working with TravelPortland - Nr. 34 on the list - on developing and implementing their social media strategy which includes Twitter activities)

So the learning form this? You need to spend time on tweets and on growing your number of followers. And you need to develop metrics to measure the efficiency of your twitter efforts over time.

What are your thoughts on this?