A study into the popularity of travel-related Twitter accounts has revealed only two profiles beginning with the words "Visit", "Travel", "Tourism" or "Discover" have more than 10,000 followers.
The pair - TravelPortland and VisitVentura - have 14,000 and 11,500 followers respectively and lead a field of over 1,500 other Twitter profiles using similar tourism-related terminology.
The study was carried out by co-founder Ian Cumming of Australia-based travel startup and Q&A service Travellr.
Cumming examined around 200,000 accounts and created a series of charts detailing the most popular (followers) by city, country and region.
He admits the survey is not 100% scientific but given the ubiquitous use of "Travel", "Visit", "Discover" and "Tourism" by many DMOs it is a very close representation.
However, further analysis of the data has shown that the Twitter profiles are not exclusively run by DMOs.
For example, content and social site WhereI'veBeen controls around 30 on the list including TravelSydney, TravelLondon and TravelMadrid.
Just six profiles have over 5,000 followers and a mere 75 have over 1,000.
The overall top 20 overall and their approx number of followers:
- TravelPortland - 14,000
- VisitVentura - 11,500
- VisitChicago - 8,900
- TravelPonce - 8,700
- VisitMaine - 6,700
- TravelOregon - 5,500
- VisitSanDiego - 4,500
- VisitVirginia - 4,100
- VisitFlorida - 4,000
- VisitOrlando - 3,900
- VisitDublin - 3,850
- VisitSanAntonio - 3,800
- VisitIndiana - 3,700
- VisitEngland - 3,250
- VisitPeru - 3,200
- TravelNevada - 3,200
- VisitBatonRouge - 2,900
- VisitHolland - 2,850
- VisitMesa - 2,850
- TravelEcuador - 2,800
The full results are available for free via this Google Doc. Cumming is adding more profiles as they emerge.