The results come from a report published by eDigitalResearch that evaluated the social media presence of travel brands between December 9 and 15 2013.

And here’s a look in more detail at the Facebook, Twitter and G+ results…

Facebook

KLM tops the Facebook chart with just over 4.5m fans, followed by Air France (2.8m) and Emirates (2.3m). The fact that airlines inhabit the top three spots is put down to their large international customer base.

The report also looks at engagement levels of these brands based in part on the ‘talking about’ data found on brand pages.

It found that, based solely on ‘talking about’ numbers, Emirates jumps to the top spot with KLM second and Air France third.

KLM’s success on Facebook is attributed in part to the fact that it responds to questions in the customer’s native language.

It also has a number of useful apps, such as the Flight Status app that allows users to track flights in real time.

Twitter

American Airlines has managed to usurp KLM on the Twitter list with 684,000 followers compared to 669,000 for its rival. Delta rounds out an all-airline top three with 558,000 followers.

As with its Facebook page, KLM uses Twitter as a customer service tool and updates its header image with the expected response time throughout the day.

It also responds to customers in ten languages, meaning that the brand is accessible to customers across the globe.

Google+

Google+ allows users to either +1 or follow brands, but for this study eDigitalResearch focused on the latter as a measurement of popularity.

British Airways came top of the league with 2.4m followers, followed by Expedia (1.92m) and KLM (1.90m).

As we saw with retail brands, there is a huge difference between those brands at the top of the table compared to those at the bottom. This is a reflection of G+’s failure to properly capture the imagination of both brands and consumers.

British Airways maintains user interest by updating its page everyday with photographs and videos, however it’s not uncommon for major consumer brands to leave their G+ profile dormant for extended periods or totally ignore them altogether.