Where in the World are Top Travel Bloggers Going?
Fair warning that this is a long article featuring a bunch of maps, graphs, and even a little math.
Over the past [way-too-long] I have entered in the travels of 15 famous travel bloggers from all over the world -- 2069 unique cities and 176 unique countries to be exact. I aimed for diversity in my sources in terms of gender, country/region of origin, age, and travel style (solo, family, couple) to get a comprehensive picture of where the “average” travel blogger has been. In doing so I got to see photos of unbelievable nature, incredible tales of hospitality and generosity shown from hosts of every country and walk of life, and a few exhilarating stories I am glad not to be a part of (kidnapping, motorcycle crashes, etc.). Ultimately, it was a way to "travel" during 2020/2021 and a welcome, safe escape from quarantine.
My goals with this work and post are two-fold:
- I wanted to know where some of the top travel bloggers have been going (and where they weren’t) to see if there were any interesting trends. I also wanted to compile a “list” for people so that they could see which bloggers have been to their city of interest so they can go find the articles. I also wanted to paint a picture of which areas may be not worth seeing (if no bloggers are going there) and which ones are must-sees.
- Showcase the capabilities of my Travel Map project, Geornal, by plotting a few thousand data points (cities) on a single, filterable map for these bloggers who would be the potential “superusers” of the site. This highlights the usefulness of having a map of all of your friends’ travels so you can ask “Who has been to Lisbon?” and get the answer without hoping the right people see your FB post.
Bloggers
AdventurousKate-IG: @adventurouskate (99.1k followers)
-Twitter: @adventurouskate (50.5k followers)
AlexinWanderland
-IG: @alexinwanderland (80k followers)
-IG: @bemytravelmuse (123k followers)
-Twitter: @BeMyTravelMuse (29.4k followers)
-IG: @peachananr (5.7k followers)
-Twitter: @BucketListly (2.3k followers)
-IG: @dipyourtoesin (5.3k followers)
-Twitter: @dipyourtoesin (11.9k followers)
-IG: @i_am_aileen (65.4k followers)
-Twitter: @iAmAileen (6.9k followers)
-Twitter: @NEFootsteps (17.1k followers)
-IG: @nomadasaurus (83.1k followers)
-Twitter: @NOMADasaurus (84.7k followers)
-IG: @nomadic_chica (19.8k followers)
-Twitter: @NomadicChica (18.1k followers)
-IG: @nomadicmatt (128k followers)
-Twitter: @nomadicmatt (121.2k followers)
-IG: @theblondeabroad (529k followers)
-Twitter: @theblondeabroad (31.1k followers)
-IG: @willhatton__ (54.8k followers)
-Twitter: @wandering_will (87.1k followers)
-IG: @uncornered_market (43.4k followers)
-Twitter: @umarket (42.3k followers)
-IG: @wanderingearl (4.7k followers)
-Twitter: @WanderingEarl (20.2k followers)
-IG: @wildjunket (16.5k followers)
-Twitter: @WildJunket (79.5k followers)
Results
Loaded below are the combined results from all of the Travel Bloggers (first map) as well as a second map which is a depiction of world population and each yellow dot represents 1 million people.
On the interactive blogger map (third map below), you can filter to one blogger at a time or view them all at once. So, off the bat, that “score” you see next to each blogger isn’t meant to say that some bloggers are better than others, it is simply a calculation that roughly translates to how many cities they have been to (or how many posts of theirs I could find).
As for the map itself, a few obvious things:
- Nothing groundbreaking in that the bloggers frequent some of the world’s hot-spots for tourism: East/Southeast Asia, USA, Europe, Australia/New Zealand.
- Regions where there aren’t many people and/or extreme weather or terrain are not visited much, even by these outlier travelers. This is also somewhat an issue inherent to the Geornal tool itself if I am honest, as if a city/town is not listed on OpenStreetMaps it cannot currently be added to the website. Certain bloggers have travelled into the Sahara desert or the Amazon rainforest but their visits weren’t loggable because the towns they mentioned are “off-the-map”, so to speak. Future features include the ability to add custom points at specific lat/long values to mitigate this problem.
- As in point two, the bloggers tend to travel to areas where a bunch of people already live. This is presumably because people have settled throughout history in areas rich in resources and transportation options. Once there they of course created buildings, parks, art of cultural significance that is appreciated worldwide. So, it isn’t that the bloggers want to be with a bunch of people necessarily, but simply that the coolest places to visit tend to have a lot of inhabitants. See the population map vs the blogger map. To my eye, there are a few notable exceptions to the similarities between the maps:
- The most obvious is the near complete avoidance of Western Africa despite it being a very populated area. Lagos, Nigeria is the 17th largest city in the world (and projected to be top-10 by the end of the decade) but only 1 of the 15 bloggers have been there! This is a region that is described as the most difficult to travel to by LonelyPlanet, so that is a decent portion of the story but these are some of the most experienced, well-versed travelers in the world so why should that stop them? In all honesty, I had to really search to find bloggers who had been to this region, with WildJunket and HeyDipYourToesIn (½ of whom is of Nigerian descent) being the main ones writing about this area that I found. Overall, I’d think that the region does not appeal to travel bloggers simply because it is not a particularly “flashy” region -- it has significant poverty (lots of low HDI countries http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdr2020.pdf) and may not be perceived as a travel destination by blog readers.
More population than Travelers
- Inland China: My guess is this is primarily due to the language barrier and the difficulty of getting around without a car or available public transport. In addition, as I am only giving the bloggers credit for cities they have written about it may just be that writing about tiny villages doesn’t make sense from a financial perspective as they are trying to generate content which draws eyes -- tiny villages deep in the interior of China may be beautiful but probably not great for generating clicks.
- Inland Russia: A bit surprised that none of the bloggers seem to have ridden the Trans-Siberian railway through some big Russian cities.
- Inland Southern Brazil: Travel to Brazil focuses on the coastline and the Amazon itself. I’d assume that a lack of reliable transportation infrastructure along with some safety concerns may limit blogger travel into the interior of the country. In addition, the aforementioned Geornal limitation on Amazon travels may be at play here too.
- Saudi Arabia: This is one of a few countries where the government’s restriction on foreign tourism has limited the ability of bloggers to visit. That said, due to https://time.com/5688301/saudi-arabia-tourist-visa-program/ this is likely changing as the country is opening up its borders to tourists.
- Midwest US: At the risk of upsetting some people, there is a reason that these are known as “fly-over” states -- they do not have much draw in terms of internationally-renowned tourist attractions and while they do have natural beauty, the lack of high-speed transportation infrastructure in the US coupled with its vast size makes getting to these locations too time-consuming for the average traveler.
- New Zealand: While there are a few big cities in New Zealand, the island’s natural beauty is world renowned and has made it a hot travel destination year-round (hiking, skiing, adventure sports).
More Travelers than population
- Many tiny islands were visited despite having no “population dot” on the world population map. This is unsurprising as many islands offer a “getaway” destination that is remote and the polar opposite of a big, populous city.
- 10 of the 15 bloggers have visited the Galapagos islands, making it one of the most commonly visited places amongst the group, but very few people live there permanently.
Climate
The map below can be filtered by climate region and the second map (underneath) shows the same climate zone map with the Blogger data overlayed.
In looking at the data with and without the blogger's city locations, you can see that by color, all shades of Green are the most popular climate zones to visit by far as they are temperate and generally travellable for most months of the year. These include the majority of Europe, Japan, New Zealand and East Australia, and portions of Southeast USA and Brazil/Argentina. The only equatorial region which seems to be preferable is South East Asia while the only arid region that is commonly visited is the Middle Eastern region between the Mediterranean and Red Seas. Finally, the main snowy region that is visited is the Northeast USA and into Canada. Overall, while there are some visitors for virtually every climate region there is a clear preference towards the Green ones.
https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/david.pires/viz/KoppenGeigerClimateClassification/KoppenClimateClassification
Blogger Comparison
Comparing who is the "most traveled" amongst these travel bloggers is arbitrary and rather pointless as all of them have seen a significant portion of the world. Yet, I am sure when asked they would declare that there is much more to see. While there is a score by their name, in my opinion, travel in its ideal and most beneficial state is culturally immersive, educational, and leisurely which may not necessarily correlate with a high GeorneyScore. Still, after typing in all of this data it only makes sense to do some sort of comparison and see if any interesting results are uncovered.
World Map by Gender
I see two main patterns here: female bloggers tend to be more likely to go to island nations, particularly those in the South Pacific, and male bloggers tend to be more willing to go to places like Eastern Europe and the Middle East where it may be more dangerous as a solo female traveler.
Country Heat Map (darker = more visited)
As seen by the scale, the darker countries have been visited by more bloggers (# represents # of bloggers). Each of the six main continents each has at least one country with 10 or more visitors and Western Europe/South East Asia (SEA) are the two most visited regions (I am ashamed to admit that my first thought about why Western Europe was so popular was that it is "centrally located" but then I remembered how the Earth works). I am a little surprised that Mexico and Argentina are more popular than their more populous nations just north but other than that things seem pretty much as expected.
Most Visited Countries (Top 27)
Surprisingly, there is no country that all 15 travel bloggers have visited (AlexinWanderland has not yet visited Germany). Overall, lots of South East Asia and Europe -- I would have thought Brazil, Morocco, and maybe one of the Nordic countries would have made the list and I am surprised Sri Lanka had such a consensus but other than that nothing too weird.
Most Visited Cities (Top 26)
The map below shows how these top visited cities are distributed around the world.
Breakdown of Articles Written by Continent
Perhaps it is just my North American bias but I would have thought that North America would be closer to Asia but I think the large distances between big cities, particularly in the USA and Canada, means that bloggers travelling to North America just aren't going to see as high of a quantity of North American cities in one go-round.
Bloggers: Continent Breakdown
Admittedly, a bit of a crazy chart but this shows the breakdown of the quantity of cities visited to each continent split by blogger. Said more simply, WildJunket and TheBrokeBackpacker combined represent 30% (15% + 15%) of the visited cities in Africa. The size of the bars themselves are a relative ranking that is based on the sheer quantity of cities visited. So, while the TheBrokeBackpacker has visited 22% of the total South American cities that the full group has visited, this bar is smaller because it is a smaller # of cities than the # of North American cities he has visited.
Main takeaways here are which bloggers are particularly well-traveled to a certain continent. To summarize:
Africa: WildJunket, TheBrokeBackpacker
Asia: TheBrokePackpacker, Bucketlistly
Europe: TheBrokeBackpacker, NomadicMatt, AdventurousKate
North America: TheBrokeBackpacker, AdventurousKate
Oceania: NeverendingFootsteps, TheBrokeBackpacker, NomadicMatt
South America: TheBrokeBackpacker, NomadicMatt, Nomadasaurus
Obviously, there is a theme in that TheBrokeBackpacker (Will) is a great resource for basically any continent. But, people don't tend to travel or do travel research based on a whole continent (maybe Oceania as it is pretty much just Australia and NZ) so the following chart may be more useful.
Bloggers: Continent Breakdown (by Country)
Africa
Asia
Europe
North America
Oceania
South America
Bloggers: Unique Countries
The table on the left shows the # of countries each blogger has visited that nobody else (amongst the 15 bloggers) has visited (or at least written about). Far and away the "winner" is WildJunket with 9 and more than double what anyone else has.
The table on the right shows the # of countries each blogger has written either the most (or tied for the most) # of articles. Despite having 0 unique countries, Will at TheBrokeBackpacker is a prolific writer with nearly double the amount of countries where he has written the most articles. NomadicMatt's data justifies his long-running status as one of the most popular travel bloggers with a second place in both of the the two comparisons.
Conclusion
Well, where in the world are top travel bloggers going? Mostly where you'd expect -- those locations rich in history, culture, and beautiful scenery that their readers are excited to hear about. Sometimes these are popular tourist destinations like Rome, Paris, Tokyo while other times they are more hard-to-reach locations like the Galapagos or Faroe Islands that their readers just want to visit digitally (or "vigit", as I typo-ed in originally). Where they aren't going are the centers of large countries like the USA, Russia, Brazil, China as it seems that these interiors are just too hard to reach both for the bloggers and their readers and there aren't enough experiences that warrant making the longer journey in these areas. They also don't tend to go places too extreme in terms of weather, unless there are amazing, unique natural or cultural venues to see like in Egypt and Iceland. So, what I learned was that one) there are people years younger than me who've lived massively cooler lives, two) a lot about what does and doesn't work with my website (which you should check out by the way), and three) just that there are so many interesting places in the world and that you can gain plenty of insight and enjoyment through reading about other's travels. So all in all, if you like travel and learning about interesting places, go checkout any of these bloggers' sites. And if you want to record the places you've been or want to go, checkout geornal.herokuapp.com and make a profile.
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