Great places-to-avoid heatmap using distribution of photos on Panoramio. Nice idea! By BlueMoon.ee
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World Map Of Touristyness
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40 Comments
Umm… what happened to New Zealand?
That was my thought exactly.
Tourism maybe an important factor in some areas (European alpine areas, for example) but I think that the general population density as well access to cameras and internet connectivity are important parameters.
New Zealand doesn’t exist? Damn, I thought it looked dark out.
I guess it makes sense that it lines up very closely with this picture of Earth’s city lights at night:
http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/3888/earthatnight.jpg
Google was forced to delete New Zealand’s data due to privacy issues.
Rubbish! This shows something, but touristyness isn’t it. It would mean that Germany is more visited than France by an order of magnitude. Instead I see something in that relation that suggest to me two things: A substantial amount of pictures in a country is taken by the inhabitants. Also some countries, such as France, have their own picture sharing sites.
Thanks for advising me not to visit Japan, Moscow, Rio, Iceland, the south of France etc cos they are obviously just rubbish tourist traps…
Either that, or this is a great guide to the most interesting places to visit…
Nice, but agreed with Eric; this map *heavily* correlates with population density and wealth (i.e. access to digital photography).
For me, a more interesting analysis would be we objects (natural or person-made) are the most photographed? This would again be heavily biased towards cities, but I would love to know if the Empire State Building was more photographed than say the Eiffel Tower or Sydney Opera House, and if so, by how much.
*ahem* – New Zealand?
Come on, kiwis! That picture is just a snap of a Google Map. Go to the link and you’ll find the damm isnlands!
Places to avoid? What are you, Indie Rock Pete? Okay, you idiots can go to Chad or Siberia. I’ll be enjoying the temples of Kyoto, the art galleries of Europe, and the beaches of the Mediterranean. Certain places attract tourists because they are awesome, and so people go there to see them.
Great places to avoid? You must not have been to many (or any) of the brightly lit places. Or gray places for that matter.
Only thing more boorish than a travel snob is an inexperienced travel snob.
New Zealand is there. It’s a small place. If you zoom in on the map, NZ is well lit-up.
Hi D watson thats my name , Seems pretty popular name,, this planetry change does New Zealand survive
Click on the image and you’ll see the whole map on google, with NZ too. :)
Why would these be “great places to avoid”? I WANT to visit Europe. I like it, I have family there, it is beautiful (on many levels: architecturally, in terms of food, etc), and it is culturally exciting. This is a map of where human being choose to visit. Don’t like that? Well, then YOU go to Cameldung, Egypt, population 7, and I’ll visit Barcelona.
Half of Alaska and all of Hawaii are missing too — make that a significant portion of the Pacific Ocean is missing. Looks like from GMT -8 to GMT +11 is gone.
Click on the image and go to the Google Maps image and see the whole thing.
Geographical repartition of Panoramio users has to be put in perspective here.
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/panoramio.com
For instance, Chinese, Indian, Japanese and American users seem to post a lot less on Panoramio than European users, thus creating a bias.
New Zealand, being cut from maps since 1775.
Who cropped this image? An Australian?
Don’t worry, breath normally folks; New Zealand does exist :) it’s just been cropped from the image above, along with Antarctica etc. It IS shown on the full size map.
Re: New Zealand — click through to the main map. We’re lit up like a Christmas tree.
*AHEM* click the link?
Funny how Africa is so dark…I guess people don’t visit, they just plunder the resources.
If you follow through the image, it loads up Google Maps.
If you give the Google Maps image a minute or so, it loads the coloring as an overlay.
We in New Zealand exist do exist on the Google Maps version… We just didn’t make the cut for the thumbnail.
I thought New Zealand was quite a popular tourist destination…
Evidently not as it doesn’t exist apparently…
what about Bali?
Ha! Spot the thread chocka-block with Kiwis! I see you there, Peter :)
I think the reason NZ doesn’t show up is that camera’s – like electricity – don’t work there.
As mentioned, this is more likely heatmap shows the relative popularity of Panoramio and “touristiness’ (whatever that means). Suggestions to this conclusion on “heat” in London against Iceland and brightness largest in Europe. While France seems much dimmer, a general in the rest of Europe. I suspect it is because of tourists to avoid visiting in France.
I’m with Eric. I don’t think you can conclude that this is only tourism related.
there are lots of factors including number of cameras, internet connections, geographic distribution of panaramio users, how photgenic an area is- ther are palces that people visit but don’t photograph or don’t post the results on that kind of website…
and so on…
I think all you can conclude is it is a good map if you want to see which areas you will find lots of photos of on Panaramio. still interesting but for different reasons.
Looks like the entire Pacific was chopped off. Hawaii?
Nice to see that France, The netherlands germany and the uk are some of the biggest tourist attractions. I don’t see that much yellow and red anywhere else on the world map.
Maybe it’s just because we take more photos in Europe, or share them on the Internet more
Directly linking panoramio density to touristiness is flawed, as others have pointed out. An improved approach would be to only included pictures taken by non-locals, based on panoramio accounts. This would even out some of the flaws like pop. density or web access.
The coding parameter isnt properly defined. There is no way the whole of the UK is more touristy than larger bigger parts of the US. Whats the cut-off point? I think you’ll find that this map is heavily skewed by multi-national immigration and native tourism, people having moved being permanent tourists as opposed to just pin-point locations. Unless its some ridiculously low rate of visit etc then there no way certain geographic areas can account for that. Conclusion- Not very scientific. Even if NZ was on the map I wouldnt go!! haha, up the Conchords : )
My camp is doing a unit on pandemics/endemics/epidemics and I figured that these countries would be The first to be hit, and hit hard, carrying the disease all over the world
More than anything else, it shows that the map is inhabited by American tourists who take pictures of their holidays in Europe.
These ones would seem a bit (read “much”) more accurate:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/72157624209158632/
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~crandall/photomap/
The last is based on an actual paper which can be downloaded.
The new sightseeing heatmap site http://www.sightsmap.com takes Ahti’s approach to a new level. This time you can zoom to high details and explore anywhere. High-res maps for superpopular areas have categorized FourSquare places attached: see what is really so popular out there.