Mapping the most photographed places in the world

Published January 6, 2014

I recently stumbled upon this article about a neat tool that visualizes photographed locations around the world as a heat map:

sightsmap

Looking at the visualization, it struck me that it correlates quite closely with the train, bus and ferry transport coverage in Rome2Rio. That’s not surprising; regions with developed transport infrastructure are also more likely to be visited and photographed. We have also focused on improving our coverage in popular tourist areas.

It also struck me that the photography visualization can also help us to identify popular regions where our coverage is lacking. We are constantly looking for new ways to help prioritize the efforts of our global content team. So, I decided to overlay the Rome2Rio coverage map over the heat map:

photos-transport-combined 

A few regions where we should focus our efforts stood out: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Iceland, Jamaica, northern Algeria and northern Tunisia. The coast of the Black Sea, northern Pakistan, Taiwan, the Virgin Islands and the Bahamas also warrant greater focus.

Written by
Co-founder & CEO
Rome2rio, based in Melbourne, Australia, is organising the world’s transport information. We offer a multi-modal, door-to-door travel search engine that returns itineraries for air, train, coach, ferry, mass transit and driving options to and from any location. Discover the possibilities at rome2rio.com