Trends Q: How many hotels and resorts have taken the Ice Bucket Challenge so far?

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has grown like few things ever have within the social sphere. Some are critical of various aspects of the movement, others laud the massive amount of funds that have been raised, but it’s hard to deny the success it has garnered. But what about travel brands? Have they joined in the movement or are they watching from the sidelines? Here’s what we found.

The Goods
To find our answer we took a sample of over 1,000 ski resorts, hotels, beach resorts, and golf resorts. We first looked at those who had been active on social media since July 1, 2014 and then counted how many of those destinations had also tweeted about the challenge either by using one of the hashtags (#icebucketchallenge, #strikeoutals, etc.) or wording that made it clear they had participated. Here’s how many of each group have taken part as of September 3, 2014.

From our sample, golf resorts have participated the most (32% on both Facebook and Twitter) with ski resorts, beach resorts, and hotels all on a similar level of participation (around 18-20% on both sites).

What This Means
Truth be told, this is much higher than we expected. Though some of these challenges have come across our own feeds, the fact that over 30% of golf resorts have participating is pretty incredible.

Will more brands join in as nominations exponentially grow or are we on the tail end of the movement? We’re not sure, but with other trends waiting in the wings (like #doubtfireface), it’s a very interesting time for brands and causes on social media.

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