Last year, when we conducted our 2023 Annual Review, we believed it was the most transformative year in NomadMania’s twelve-year history — and indeed, it was. You are welcome to read our reports from 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014 and 2013.
However, little did we know what 2024 had in store. Now, as we reach the end of the year and reflect on everything that’s happened, we can confirm that things are only getting more exciting. This is probably how it should be, as the essence of life is continuous growth and development.
So much has happened within NomadMania in 2024 that it’s impossible to highlight every small detail or event. You can always explore our newsletter archive and blog for more. But in this article, we’ll focus on the major milestones from each month. Let’s dive in!
JANUARY – UN Masters Ultimate Report
Since NomadMania is the leading authority on those who have visited, or aspire to visit, every country in the world, we opened 2024 with the publication of the Ultimate Report on People Who Visited Every Country in the World. This is an in-depth study with full comprehensive data on all UN Masters.
What does it even mean to visit every country in the world? How many people completed this goal each year since Rauli Virtanen did it for the very first time in 1988? Where are the UN Masters from? What are their ages, genders, and ethnicities? What country has the most UN Masters compared to its overall population? Finally, which countries do they choose as the final destination on this journey?
Find out answers to all these questions. Whether you’re a seasoned globetrotter or just starting your journey, this report is a must-read. Enjoy. Please note, we will be updating this report in early 2025 once we analyse the new data obtained for 2024.
FEBRUARY – Envoy Programme & Local Events
The Envoy Programme is designed to empower passionate travellers to serve as ambassadors for NomadMania within their respective geographical areas. In short, the NomadMania Envoy Programme is a network of our local representatives all over the world, encouraged to connect travellers from within.
So far, after almost a year, we have around 40 Envoys. See the full list here and check out the vacant positions if you’re willing to commit to these terms with all the benefits of course.
One of the most successful initiatives conducted by our Envoys has been hosting local events all over the world. Only in 2023, we hosted over 40 meetings on all continents apart from Africa (hint). See our calendar for future events.
Our recent NomadMania meeting in Jakarta
As more and more travellers embark on continuous world explorations, recently we also introduced a Messenger position for the NomadMania members who don’t have a permanent base but still want to participate in the community-building process. Welcome!
MARCH – Changing Our Legal Form
For the past 12 years, we maintained our status as a non-profit organisation. We were founded on the principle of helping others learn more about the world and being facilitated to achieve their travel goals.
As we have grown, so have our operational costs, both for absolutely necessary things such as servers and web-related technology and for human resources costs, as our team has expanded with more members – necessary both for progress in terms of IT as well as marketing.
In order to continue our operations and expand in a way consistent with our ambitious vision, we changed our operational model to be profit-based, headquartered in Estonia as NomadMania OU.
NomadMania partners: Harry Mitsidis, Daniel Zagrodzki and Orest Zub.
At the same time, we are not losing sight of our non-profit origins, as we continue to focus on our aim of a world where travel becomes more democratic. We continue with our scholarship programme among other non-profit initiatives.
What does this imply in terms of you? Not much, if anything at all, on a day-to-day basis, since NomadMania’s basic offering will always remain free of charge. Read more details of this soft transition here.
APRIL – Introducing Gender to the UN Master List
Our February theme about the inequality in travel sparked an active discussion in the global travel community regarding the perceived limited representation of women in the world of big travellers. As the most inclusive and democratic travel club in the world, we at NomadMania challenged this assumption and therefore published a specific research article on the Women Who Visited Every Country in the World.
Additionally, to cement our commitment to female travellers, we introduced the Gender Filter to the UN Masters List on our platform. Besides that, we have been actively encouraging women to become our Envoys and Messengers.
MAY – Improved Functionality for Adding New Series
Many of our members live (and travel) for the Series on our platform. Currently, there are over 70,000 of them. We reached the point when it became very challenging to handle this ever-growing list.
At the same time, we realise that the world is full of incredible places to visit and hidden gems. We know that our amazing NomadMania community would love to share them. That’s why we introduced a new easier way for our members to suggest new locations.
With just a few clicks you can suggest places that you think are worthy of inclusion. Here are the instructions on how to suggest a new series item if you haven’t tried it out yet.
JUNE – New NomadMania App
For years, the mobile app was one of our weakest points. It is extremely difficult technically, financially and logistically to develop the app for a project as extensive as NomadMania. However, being committed to providing you with the best possible experience, we focused our resources and launched a new mobile app (NomadMania 2.0) which took months to develop.
Since then, we have published dozens of updates and continue to constantly improve the app experience for you. Follow the list of updates here.
JULY – Enhanced Platform Structure
Since the map is central to our travel philosophy, we decided to put it on the home page. Your travel map became the first thing you’ll see on NomadMania.com, therefore encouraging you to explore and to plan future trips every time you visit our website. By the way, the same logic applies in our new app.
At the same time, we introduced Countries as a new layer to our platform structure and an easy way to enter the NomadMania universe before digging into Regions. You can toggle the map between Countries, NomadMania Regions and DARE places which will reflect the coloring respectively.
We also slightly changed the navigation bar to simplify and make it easier for you to maximize all the functions that NomadMania has to offer:
- GUIDE: We are developing an easy step-by-step guide to help new Nomads get started on their NomadMania journey. *** In progress;
- TRAVEL: This is just simplified from the “My Travels” tab;
- NOMADS: Former “Travellers” are “Nomads” now.
AUGUST – Focusing on NomadMania Trips
2023 was big on trips for NomadMania. We managed to take our members to destinations such as Algeria, Aland islands in Finland and FOUR times to Syria among other places. Syria in particular was so successful that after three groups in May, we ran another one in September – hopefully not our last!
During May, two groups even met in one part of the Golan Heights on the Syrian side, becoming the first groups of travellers to be granted access to this sensitive area.
The visits became possible due to the effort of our local partners from the Golden Team and the temporary window of opportunity. Currently, the place where we took the photo above is controlled by the Israeli forces.
Our unusual trips provide in-depth insight and local perspectives. They have proved to be of great interest among our community and we’ll continue offering this unique experience exclusively to our members. Check out all our trips for 2025 here.
SEPTEMBER – Certificates & Online Shop
As you know, NomadMania is the only place where highly ranked travellers are verified, ensuring their travel claims are valid. We are also the authority on those who have been to every country in the world – UN Masters.
Until recently, we had been verifying only those who reached a certain upper threshold. Yet, numerous travellers kept on approaching us asking to be verified. So, in September we launched Certification, a paid service for any member wishing to be verified, get a badge and a printed certificate sent to their home address.
This initiative was very well received by the community and dozens of NomadMania members ordered Certificates within the first few weeks after launching. Considering the interest and feedback, we have also released a further pool of certificates, this time classified by continent.
They are all available in our Online Shop together with other NomadMania travel goodies. Check out everything that we have to offer here. Purchasing anything is also a way to support our team financially so that we develop more features for you.
OCTOBER – Launching the NomadMania CHAT
Something that many of you have been requesting is launching the possibility to contact other users directly within our platform. Well, you asked – we made it and introduced the NomadMania CHAT.
Now you can send messages to other nomads directly in our app (iOS and Android). Soon we also plan to release the same functionality for the web version.
NOVEMBER – Awards & the Extraordinary Travel Festival
We hosted the 5th NomadMania Travel Awards in Bangkok as the culmination of the Extraordinary Travel Festival. With a record amount of 250 travellers from around the globe for the 3-day event, there was simply too much to say, so we published this full report.
NomadMania was widely represented at ETF from different angles. First of all, around 100 of our members visited the event. We had a great stand and it was always busy.
Additionally, our founder Harry Mitsidis and managing partner Orest Zub delivered the following talks: The Dark Travel and NomadMania to the Extreme.
DECEMBER – Nomads Near Me & Around The World
Our mission is to serve the NomadMania community. We are proud to have launched a new feature in the app, “Nomads Near Me & Around The World,” which shows the locations of other users who enable this feature within 250 meters of their actual location.
Although a digital space, it is very important to us that our website and app extend beyond the realm of the internet. We already offer plenty of offline activities, such as meetings, tours, and conferences.
Now, with the location-sharing feature, it is even easier to connect with other NomadMania explorers in the real world. We believe this feature will bring the community closer together by encouraging real-life interactions.
Only within a month since launching it, over 1000 people have activated the location-sharing feature and use it to catch up with other travellers all over the world. Try it if you haven’t done so until now. Read more about the feature and how to enable it here.
SUMMARY
What a year! Someone once said that people usually overestimate what they can manage to do quickly but often underestimate the effect of long-term commitment. 2024 is proof of that. Obviously, we could do more and better. However, looking back we can definitely say that it was a positive year for NomadMania and our entire travel community.
Thanks for staying with us. Our team sincerely wishes you a Happy New Year and all the best in 2025 which will hopefully be even better than 2024. Let’s keep going.
P.S. If you wish to support us please consider using the opportunity and order what you like from our Online Shop. Our 20% sale is valid until the end of 2024.
