Are tourism boards buying followers on Pinterest now?

Anne Hornyak, a social media strategist in the tourism sector has been helpfully tracking Pinterest follower counts for tourism boards for the last few months, and October numbers on the top end certainly give some food for thought: are tourism boards now buying followers on Pinterest? What else could explaion how wide a gulf there is between the top ranked DMO (destination marketing organizations), for Durango, CO, compared to the second placed and lower DMOs? Surely they would know that anyone digging even one level deeper would find out: witness the amount of red (default) pins in its followers page.

Updated: Anne replies below and suggests that it is likely a suggested user list on Pinterest’s part that’s inflating the count, rather than tourism boards buying PInterest followers.