A list of the top 20 brands mentioned on Twitter in April 2010 featured companies of all shapes and sizes - from media and technology to clothing and coffee - but unfortunately not a travel firm in sight.
Data from Brian Solis and PeopleBrowser revealed, with navel-gazing inevitably, that Twitter is the top brand mentioned in conversations on the social network last month, securing 36% of the "voice".
It was followed by:
This list shouldn't be a huge surprise at all, given that the companies mentioned are all mega-brands in their own right.
But this is where the debate about use of Twitter for engagement or promotions sits awkwardly against the often one-off nature of travel - and why it perhaps explains the reason why big travel brands are not as omnipresent on the branding lists as, say, an auction house like eBay.
First of all, reasonably widespread convention says that Twitter is best used as a conversational tool - allowing users to interact and engage with the brand and, sometimes, even with other customers.
It also allows conversations (using #hashtags) around a particular subject, often hosted by a brand (there are a few that have been smart enough to use it this way).
Take Southwest Airlines and its one million followers on Twitter. It engages with users and answers questions (unlike Jet2, as recent events have shown) as well as throw out regular promotional tweets.
This, one might presume, is quite a powerful piece of branding for Southwest?
Let's briefly take a look at the flipside.
There are dozens, probably hundreds, of travel companies that are not using Twitter to enage with their followers - which is fair enough, perhaps the audience is presumed not to be part of the Twitterati and marketing efforts are therefore best directed elsewhere.
However, they would - like Southwest, to use the example again - probably consider a Twitter presence to be there purely for branding and promotional purposes.
But this is where there is a problem with Twitter as a branding tool for travel companies, and why engagement is really the only way to make even a modest kind of an impact.
Putting business travel to one side, travel as a product is inherently an irregular pursuit for the large number of people that use Twitter or any other social network.
They will probably make a trip of some description once or twice a year, meaning that their need to search and book products via the web is small anyway, let alone using a service such as Twitter for a similar function or to follow companies they are interested. Why, for example, would a user follow Expedia all the time?
Therefore mentions of travel companies on Twitter are always going to be lower than their consumer product counterparts simply because the chatter or buzz around an organisation is weaker by virtue of the smaller volume.
When travel companies become iPods or coffee houses, which are used every day and generate conversation, then travel companies will have the same impact. But this will not happen.
Where Twitter comes into its own, of course, is in its ability to communicate quickly to customers when things go wrong or need clarifying.
But, inevitably, many of their customers will not be following them on Twitter because they are 1) irritated by the noise of promotions or 2) not interested in hearing about other customer's problems.
The trigger for this article?
A marketing executive from a reasonably large company recently admitted privately that they were frustrated at not being able to build the same kind of buzz around their brand on Twitter as companies such as Apple or other leading consumer brands.
The reason is simply in the DNA of both travel companies and Twitter itself.