3/29/2006: Worldmapper: tourist destinations

via Neatorama. Map fans, geography fans, and visual display fans alike will enjoy the many maps now being produced by Worldmapper. This one shows the destinations of 665 million international tourists per year, re-sized for our purposes. All of western Europe leads by far.

If you enjoy this map, you'll enjoy browsing the 56 others they've published so far, and notice they have plans for over 300 more.

I'm surprised at how small australia is - in terms of tourism!!. very cool map

Damn, it's hard to tell what's what at first glance. For a moment I thought Spain & Portugal were Africa.

Australia is just a *little* out of the way for most travellers. It's expensive and the flights take a big chunk of your time.

Comparison of the maps at their website is pretty amusing, I sort of pictured it as each country being represented by ballons on a map of the world with each one inflating or deflating depending on which map you look at.

Some were particularlay interesting. China has the most container cargo, the Indian sub continent the most population throughout history as well as the most trains and mopeds. The Immigration-emigration maps also add fuel to the fire currently in our headlines.

I realise that John, but from my part of the world the volume of people going there to backpack or spend a year seems to be enormous. Most 20 somethings either have done it or are planning to do so, regardless of costs etc.. thats all.

also have you seen the refugee set of maps? It seem that south america has the same amount (relatively) of inflow as outflow.
(I must cease and desist from editing my posts, but I always seem to forget something!)

What happened to my post? O well...
South America is so slim, and the good ol' US don't look to healthy on that one, either. France seems to be the popular destination, if you can avoid the riots and protests.

I'm curious about how they define a tourist destination.

If I live in Virginia, and travel to California for vacation, does that count as a tourist destination to the United States? Or does it only count if I cross an international border to get there?

If travel within ones' own country doesn't count, then it would be very obvious that small, closely spaced countries like Europe would see high numbers.

OK. I read the link. Should have done that in the first place.

Only international trips seem to count. I call B.S.

I can barely fit on the freaking Metro trains this time of year since there are so many tourists here in DC looking at the cherry blossoms. But according to this map, they don't exist, since they are all american.

It's interesting that New Zealand appears to be the least distorted by this mapping.

I like your thinking (can I borrow it for a while?!). by right europe should be counted as one region.

Cool maps, although the aircraft maps (27,28,29) are mostly meaningless because they use the plane's country of registration rather than where it's flying. That completely distorts the data.

If I drive to Alaska, that's my destination but does Canada get a partial credit?

Can't find Luxembourg

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pi Can't find Luxembourg

Color me stoopid.
I have a problem with maps. I always skipped geography in HS coz I knew I was prolly gonna fail anyway. I can't even follow Goggle map directions. sheesh.....

I agree .... FL should be 1/3 of the map if they just count the people going to Disney and if they count all the &*(^(* snowbirds it would be the whole map.

So my little mini vacation this weekend to Captiva doesn't count, huh? I feel cheated!

looks like africa is the anus of the world in this picture. (just by the look of it im not making a political or social coment)

Africa? Probably once the revolution season is over, folks will start going back.

africa needs a disneyland.

If any U.S. state is allowed to argue about their size, that would be Hawaii. Probably, they don't represent popularity on the sub-national level here, although doesn't .

Are the islands of Mauritius (red blob in the Indian Ocean) and the Falklands (green, in the So Atlantic) really such popular tourist sites? They look to be about the same size as Costa Rica maybe.

Damn, that big. I was looking for something small

OMG I have just seen the alcohol and cigarette imports v exports. The UK is getting the rest of the world drunk (I'm assuming it is booze we are exporting as we are not known for our tobacco plantations...we hardly import any!!)

meat and cereal exports are australias thang.

we are feeding the world breakfast and beef

Maps of this type, where the area is scaled to match some value, are called "cartograms." Most cartograms you see will have the distortion that these maps have, where the original shapes and angles of the country are kinda lost when a lot of scaling has to be done.

In the last couple years, a new technique for generating cartograms was discovered that borrows techinques from the simulation of gaseous diffusion. This new technique is much faster than the old, and also has the advantage of a greater sense of the original shape. You can see cartograms done with the new technique here: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/

A description of the new technique (along with some cartograms) can be found here: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040828/bob8.asp

I'm surprised by the amount of ocean tourism!