User Rankings

NomadMania sees the world as comprising 1301 regions; most countries are divided based on a number of elements such as their size, population, cultural diversity, economic strength and international tourist appeal. These regions are substantial in that they either have a considerable territory or are autonomous. Nearly all our regions apart from those in the Arctic and Antarctica are populated.

Our UN Listing considers the 193 permanent members of the United Nations only. This is considered the most straightforward and least contentious way of viewing countries.

Our UN+ list goes beyond UN countries by also considering some other autonomous entities. These could include territories with a special status or those with a great distance from the country to which they belong. We also consider some areas which are de facto autonomous or independent even while not being recognized by the international community as such.

DARE stands for Distinctive Alternative Remote Extremes and currently encompasses 1501 places. The ‘antidote’ to our NomadMania regions, DARE takes in geographical extremes and places for the very few: remote and even uninhabited islands, unknown exclaves and culturally unusual regions.

The Traveller Century Club is the ‘mother’ of the travel clubs, having its origins in the United States in the 1950s and still going strong. This primarily social travel club considers 330 places to be visited and is a very good first step to go beyond just countries.

DEEP (Definite Exhaustive Exploring Proportion) represents the ratio of visited Regions to countries. It’s calculated simply and automatically: DEEP = Visited Regions​ / Countries Visited

An index showing how long the user stayed in each country, therefor travelling SLOWly. See more here.

One issue which our lists have not covered is the dynamism of travel. Have you travelled recently or a long time ago? This is where we bring in the YES list, which stands for ‘Years Elapsed Since’.

The list considers countries only, not regions, and we take 196 countries (193 Un Countries and Palestine, Taiwan and Kosovo). If you have completed your year of visit to a country (which is best done through My Trips, where you create a specific trip with clear dates), your YES will be automatically calculated.

You can also add the last year of your visit to a particular region on My Regions page.

If you visited the country in the current calendar year, your score is 0. We give you a ‘gift’ of the previous calendar year too – your score is 0 for any country visited in the previous calendar yes. Then, say you visited Guyana in 2021, which is now 2 years back from 2023: your score is 2. If your last visit to Tonga was in 2003, and we are in 2023, your score is 20.

If you have never visited a country, the score is your age – it is the number of years elapsed since you last visited, in this case, never, which is your years on the planet. Calculate all 196 scores and you get the total YES score. The lower score is the ‘best’ in the sense that it shows you are actively visiting countries closer to the current time.

We won’t calculate YES scores for people under 20 years old as their scores would be rather low based on their young age. We are also not listing ‘scores’ above 4,000 for this measure.

For travellers who do not use ‘My Trips’, we currently don’t have precise information on the last year of travel to a country, so we use an algorithm as follows:

Aged 20: Age for non visited countries + 10% of age for each visited country
Aged 21: Age for non visited countries + 10.5% of age for each visited country
Aged 22: Age for non visited countries + 11% of age for each visited country
i.e. the percentage will be half of the age as the age goes up
…
Aged 80: Age for non visited countries + 40% of age for each visited country

We will work to as soon as possible create a list where you can clearly note your last year of visit to a country.

Number of Know Your Earth squares visited. See more here.

Number of visited UNESCO world heritage sites.

TBT (The Biggest Travellers) is a cumulative score of all criteria which we believe is a fair indication of the world’s biggest travellers. It is calculated as a percentage of the total score of the following:

NomadMania Masterlist 1301: 20%
DARE: 20%
SLOW: 15%
YES: 5% (reverse score is best, calculated in bands: 1-750: 5, 751-1500:4, 1501-2500:3, 2501-3500: 2, 3501-4500: 1, 4500+ : 0)
UN: 2%
UN+ : 1%
TCC: 1%
CHAD: 1%
KYE: 5%
Milestones: 5%
WHS: 10 %
Top of the Tops (Series): 5%
All Series Cumulative Score: 5%
Border Series: 1%
World Cities Series: 1%
World of Nature Series: 1%
Experiences Series: 1%
Indigenous Peoples Series: 1%

Travellers with less than 135 UN countries visited are not included in the TBT ranking.

To the total score above, we add the following:

a. one point is added to the travellers who have been verified for NomadMania regions;
b. one point is added to travellers who have at least 100 achievement badges;
c. one point is added to travellers who have a Top 30 entry in the statistics for overall regions visited or new regions visited in one of the previous two calendar years (for 2024, that is 2022 and 2023);
d. Two points are added to the travellers who have passed the rigorous TBT verification and have been awarded their TBT badge – this verification can include any of the lists that form part of the TBT. Note that this verification is by invitation only, and generally includes only those with the highest placings in the TBT ranking.

Not included into the Master Ranking this is a number of Series items checked. See more here.