If your millennial guests think they have the largest social followings, they’re wrong.

There are a lot of assumptions around the intersection of age and behavior, especially when those ages are divided into the generations we marketers often rely on. But today we wanted to put specific numbers to a specific area of this conversation by analyzing the relationship between a hotel or resort guest’s age and their follower count. Here’s what we found.

The Goods
To find our answer we looked at over 300,000 hotel and resort guests whose age and Twitter handle was also known. We grouped these guests by similar ages in ~10 year increments and found the average number of Twitter followers for all the guests in each group.

For our sample the group with the highest follower count was the 31-40 group with an average of 1,666 followers. Close behind was 41-50 (1,512 followers) with 71-80 coming in last with 149 followers on average.

What This Means
What surprised us most was that millennials (who generally fall in that first 18-30 group) had smaller followings on average than not just gen x-ers but even many boomers. It’s not until you get to the 61-70 group that we see a data point below that of millennials.

Follower counts are useful in different ways for different people, but whether the goal is gaining positive impressions or avoiding negative ones, it’s good to remember that age and digital-savviness don’t always reflect how many people are listening on the other end.

Next Week, More
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