Airports in Boston and San Francisco Team Up with Twitter Promo

The evolution of social media has been really interesting to watch. While some airports and airlines have dipped their toes into the waters, others are cautiously waiting on the edge to see what will happen. Two airports that have been pretty active so far, San Francisco and Boston, are now actually teaming up to do a promotion for fliers. This is certainly unique.

I spoke with Massport Media Relations Manager Richard Walsh about the promotion between his airport, Boston Logan, San Francisco's airport, Virgin America, and the Four Seasons. He gave me all the details.

Richard explained that the promotion is Twitter-based, so to participate fliers need to be following either @bostonlogan, @SFOgal, or @virginamerica. For each day during the week of December 7, they will post a "Coast2Coast" trivia question. Answers must use the #coast2coasttrivia hashtag for tracking purposes. The people who get the correct answer will be entered in a drawing.

The two grand prizes are 2 roundtrip tickets on Virgin America between Boston and San Francisco along with 2 nights at the Four Seasons in either city. Two runner ups will be given a $100 gift card.

Richard explained that the trivia will be about both cities. I think it would make more sense to have the trivia be helpful tips about the airports, and he said that some of the them might be along those lines. Either way, this is a great way to get followers and to build some buzz.

Seeing two airports work together like this is pretty rare, but it makes sense in this case. It gives them the ability to send winners across the country thanks to the hotel and air tie-ins. It's a nice way to tap into each other's social media followings and to show that they are quite active in the space.

If you look at their Twitter pages, they're both tweeting on a regular basis with news and responses to customer queries. Many customers likely don't know about this yet, so this will help shine a spotlight on what they're providing. And you know there are plenty of travelers between Boston and San Francisco, so it's a great way to share their efforts with the followers of the other airport. It makes people feel like they're taken care of throughout their entire trip.

I expect we'll see a lot more of these kinds of things.