Category Archives: Tourism

Apr26

CVBs on Pinterest: April update

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Anne Hornyak

It’s time for another update! My list has now grown to 181 CVBs on Pinterest, not including international destinations. I’ve been tracking these basic stats weekly but it takes nearly 2 hours each Sunday to keep up so I’ll be changing my strategy soon.

What I’m seeing: the CVBs that pin daily, or almost daily, see a gain of 20+ followers each week. Those who don’t pin weekly have almost no growth at all. Of course, the larger destinations see a larger weekly growth. And so do those accounts who have a larger following. Everything seems to be proportionate on size and activity, as it should be.

Taking a break from extra analysis this month, I’m just going to share lists and resources in this post.

When I talk about “followers” below, I mean the amount of people following the entire CVB account / all of the CVB’s boards. Typically certain boards will have a LOT more followers than the entire account but it’s not possible for me to track the cumulative number of followers across all the boards each CVB has. I don’t have a script so I track everything manually and it may be hard to believe, but I do have interests other than social media.

CVBs, ranked by account followers

CVBs, ranked by number of pins Read the rest of this entry →

Apr25

Tourism Pinterest Contests

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Anne Hornyak

Tourism Pinterest Contests

Recently there have been 3 tourism Pinterest contests that have caught my attention.

1. Visit Bucks County “Repin It to Win It” Contest

This was the first CVB contest that I’ve seen. The rules are simple: repin any image from their Repin It To Win It Contest board and you could be selected randomly to win that prize. The contest period was just over a month long (March 20 – May 1, 2012).

They had 182 followers (those following their account, not the cumulative followers all of their boards) before the contest and currently have 345 followers, an 89% increase. A lot of DMOs have seen a growth average of 10-20 followers per week, which correlates directly to the amount of pins added each week. Visit Bucks County’s average for this contest period so far has been 28 followers per week.

Their contest board currently has 828 followers. They have 17 prizes/pins on that board and have a total of 2,065 repins for the contest so far.

On April 13, we saw a big jump in traffic to the contest. The ‘Repin It To Win It’ board jumped from 598 on April 12 to 733 on April 13. We specifically saw a great deal of activity on the Sesame Place pin, including more than 20 comments on that pin.

In terms of promotion, check out this get pinterested post or visit their Visit Bucks County News Pinterest board for other blog mentions.

We’ve promoted the contest through the press release, Facebook and Twitter (daily tweets about the different prizes). We’ve worked with our participating partners to encourage them to promote the contest through sample Facebook and Twitter posts on their company accounts. We promoted the Pinterest contest in our ‘This Weekend in Bucks County’ e-newsletter, as well.

This looks to be very successful! Congrats! And thanks to Jessica for providing extra stats and information!
2. Experience Columbus’ “Repin it to Win It!” Contest

This is a quick little contest to give away one prize. To enter, just repin this one image on Pinterest or leave a comment on their blog post.

Experience Columbus typically gains 20-30 followers per week. This contest is so short that it probably won’t impact their following much. So far there have been 33 comment entries on the blog and 68 repins. Of those, 50 repins occurred on the first day of the contest.

This was promoted on twitter and Facebook. It’s a very innovative way to incorporate Pinterest in a giveaway.

Well done! And thanks to Joe for providing the stats!

3. Pin Hawaii! Win a trip to Hawaii with Aqua Hotels & Resorts

This contest isn’t from a DMO but I’m including it this list because it still promotes tourism and it’s just so beautifully done.

Go to www.pinhawaii.com and be amazed! Read the rest of this entry →

Mar15

US DMOs on Pinterest: By State

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Anne Hornyak

US DMOs on Pinterest: By State

By now you’ve heard about which CVBs have an active Pinterest presence but have you wondered how they stack up when comparing states?

The 108 US CVBs on Pinterest represent 36 states in total.

Number of CVBs

The chart to the right depicts the breakdown by state. All stats were recorded on March 11.

Texas takes the lead with 16 total CVBs on Pinterest. I’m not really surprised by this. Claire Isabel, an influential Pinterest user, found me on Pinterest and shared this Texans are pinning it BIG! blog post. Her passion for Texas is amazing. She created a Texans are pinning it BIG! Pinterest board and added many of the Texas CVBs as contributors. Several of the collaborating CVBs have been actively pinning items to that board.

This concept would work wonderfully for state DMOs. CVBs can also create neighborhood boards and collaborate with attractions, restaurants or hotels in those specific locations.

The top 5 list is rounded out with California (11 CVBs), Illinois (8 CVBs), Ohio (7 CVBs) and Florida (6 CVBs).

Number of CVBs

This information is great but it doesn’t really tell us the most active states when it comes to pins or followers. I think these two metrics are important for determining active Pinterest users. Read the rest of this entry →

Mar14

CVBs on Pinterest: March update

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Anne Hornyak

CVBs on Pinterest: March update

I first blogged about CVBs on Pinterest on February 22. Within these past 3 weeks, the list of US and Canadian CVBs has increased from 34 to 110. The number of international DMOs also increased from 3 to 26 DMOs.

For this post, we’ll just focus on US and Canadian CVBs and DMOs.

One of the more important Pinterest engagement metrics is the number of repins an account receives. This is almost impossible for me to calculate manually as I’d have to look at each pin and tally the numbers for each CVB. This is why I focus mostly on the number of followers and the number of pins. The number of followers can determine an account’s reach while the number of pins shows how active/dedicated the account really is.

As a side note, a few CVBs got a head start and secured their accounts really early in the game. Users followed these accounts even though there was/is little or no activity. This is why I prefer a combination of followers and pins.

It’s no surprise that Visit Savannah is still in the lead in both number of followers and pins. With 12,422 followers, they actually have almost twice the amount of followers of all the other accounts combined (7,151 followers). The second highest is Wyoming Tourism with 775 followers. All the other CVBs have less than 400 followers.

Visit Savannah (1,090 pins) also has over double the amount of pins of any other CVB. The next closest CVB is Visit Salt Lake with 504 pins. Just beyond that are Experience Columbus (442 pins), SeeMonterey (409 pins) and VISIT Milwaukee (399 pins).

Here are the top 25 accounts in terms of followers and pins:

Now let’s look a little deeper. Read the rest of this entry →

Mar12

International DMOs on Pinterest

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Anne Hornyak

International DMOs on Pinterest

Many international DMOs have recently started to use Pinterest as another platform to promote their destinations. Since my list was created in mid-February, there has been a significant increase — from 3 to 26 international DMOs on Pinterest, as of March 10.

Of these 26, there are only 10 DMOs that have solid accounts with 75 or more pins. The chart on the right depicts the top 10 international DMOs with the most pins.

Visit Norway is clearly leading the way with 300 pins, 18 boards and 162 followers.

In terms of number of pins, close behind Visit Norway are the following DMOs: Visit Peak District (299 pins, 15 boards), Visit Trentino (284 pins, 18 boards), Visit Melbourne (236 pins, 9 boards), Visit Abu Dhabi (191 pins, 12 boards), Tourism Vancouver (122 pins, 9 boards), Visit Tuscany (117 pins, 8 boards), Calgary (103 pins, 3 boards), Visit Jordan (98 pins, 13 boards) and Visit London (75 pins, 7 boards).

Below that are 7 DMOs with a decent start (23-43 pins each), 4 DMOs with less than 11 pins each and 5 DMOs that have inactive accounts with 0 pins.

In terms of number of followers, Visit Norway is still at the top with 162 followers.

Behind Visit Norway are the following DMOs: Read the rest of this entry →

Feb22

CVBs on Pinterest

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Anne Hornyak

CVBs on Pinterest

Pinterest has quickly become one of the fastest growing social networks to date. With over 10 million users, this network should be considered as part of an organization’s social strategy. Want more stats? Check out this Pinterest infographic from Mashable or these demographics.

If you’re not familiar with Pinterest, it’s a virtual pinboard for organizing and collecting photos and videos. I’m not going to go in-depth about how to use Pinterest as Mashable put together a nice Beginner’s Guide and there’s also this massive post with instructions, tips and more demographics.

The facts behind CVBs and destinations on Pinterest

Through my research, I found 34 US destinations and 3 International destinations (Croatia, Cuba [does not appear to be the official DMO] and Jordan) with Pinterest accounts. The following comments and stats will only reflect US destinations and are current as of February 21.

There are a total of 5,013 pins and 390 boards from these 34 US destinations. These accounts have “liked” 764 pins and have a combined following of 14,970 followers.

Pins

Savannah has the highest number of pins (751), followed by Columbus (426), Arkansas (354), Monterey (334) and Lake County, IL (306). There are 16 DMOs that have over 100 pins on their account and 18 DMOs with less than 100 pins. My personal opinion is that an account should have at least 300 pins to be taken as a serious Pinterest user.

Boards

For number of boards, Arkansas takes the lead with 33 boards. Behind them are Monterey and Kissimmee, each with 19 boards, and Phoenix and Fargo-Moorhead, each with 18 boards. There are 14 DMOs with 10-17 boards each and 15 DMOs with less than 10 boards each.

As I was researching, I saw many half-filled boards but did not explore the average number of pins each DMO had on their boards. I think each board should have at least 30 pins in order to be useful to Pinterest users.

Likes

Not all DMOs are “liking” pins on Pinterest. This action is not as strong as a repin but is still an easy way to engage with other Pinterest users. There are three DMOs with over 100 likes: Ohio (198), Monterey (178) and Savannah (140). Mesa is the next closest with 86 likes but the majority of the remaining DMOs have less than 10 likes each. In fact, 13 DMOs have 0 likes.

Followers

Visit Savannah has an astounding 12,114 followers alone, leaving a combined total of 2,856 followers among the other 33 destinations. Don’t think that this means there’s an average of 86 followers per destination. There are 5 DMOs with more than 200 followers: Savannah, Wyoming, Corvallis, Indiana and Columbus.

There are 17 DMOs with less than 50 followers each. Most of these accounts are newer to Pinterest. 5 of these 17 DMOs have more than 100 pins each so even though they’re new, they’re very active.

The mother of all Pinterest boards (for the tourism industry)

If you’re as addicted to Pinterest as I am, take a moment and follow some of these DMOs. I’ve created this CVBs on Pinterest board to help. Each pin links to the CVB’s Pinterest account so following your favorite destinations is easy. Read the rest of this entry →

Feb20

QR Codes: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Anne Hornyak

QR Codes: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

QR Codes aren’t new but they’re becoming more mainstream now. Many brands and destinations are using them effectively but users’ expectations are starting to change.

What are they?

A QR Code (Quick Response Code) can be scanned by a smart phone and will take the user to a website, a vCard or compose an email. Most of the uses I’ve seen take users to a website. For some basic QR Code tips, check out this #tourismchat highlights post on QR Codes.

How to use a QR Code

Don’t just slap a code on something. Even though QR Codes are becoming more and more mainstream, it’s essential to provide some type of educational steps for those users who have never seen a QR Code before. Even if it’s a one-liner that says “Scan this with your smart phone.” If you have more room, tell users to download a QR Code reader on their smart phone.

How are brands using them? (the Good)

One of my all-time favorite stores, The Home Depot, uses QR Codes on their flowers and plants. Scanning the code takes you to a site that lists more information about the plant, such as the light, water and spacing needed. Check it out yourself! Click on the photo for a larger image. Read the rest of this entry →

Feb20

Best Practices for Facebook from #tourismchat

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Anne Hornyak

Best Practices for Facebook from #tourismchat

#tourismchat is a twitter chat focused on social media in the tourism industry. Our Nov 3 (2011) chat featured Facebook as the topic.

Even though Facebook is constantly changing (and I’m way behind in my blog), I wanted to share these #tourismchat highlights here. I think a lot of the tweets in this chat can help you build a solid strategy or inspire you to try new things on Facebook.

Q1: Is your page geared towards leisure tourism only? Do you have separate niche pages?

jennrush03 We just have the one page for our CVA that’s mainly leisure travel. Our other 2 facebook pages are for events we run.
scullyano We have one FB page for all leisure, meetings, groups, weddings, etc.
thefrontrowe Our page is predominantly leisure tourism, but also aimed at growing local advocacy.
maddenmedia A1: Facebook works best with B2C markets. Might be best to create a custom B2B app/tab dedicated to a specific niche on 1 page.

Q2: How often do you update your Facebook page? What time? Evenings/weekends too?

emilyforsha Plan is to move toward twice daily, morning and evening.
maddenmedia No more than three times a day, but we strive for one to two posts per day on pages we administer.
bobf_vstpgh We generally update no more than 2-3 times per day and try to keep several hours between posts.

Q3: What tabs do you have on your page? Welcome tab, booking engine, etc. Are you tracking links to these tabs? Read the rest of this entry →