One of NomadMania’s core missions is to help people explore the world in a meaningful way and understand it better. For this reason, we approach travel beyond the conventional division into continents and countries — we aim to go deeper and further.
At the heart of this approach lies our main travel list: the Masterlist of Regions.
We seek to divide each country in regions relative to other countries, so that our list of regions is rational and each country gets its relative worth in terms of regions. There are some exceptions for ethnically divided nations (such as Bosnia and Herzegovina) or for small island nations (such as Micronesia).
The original list of regions was created over a decade ago and since then went through several rather small adjustments reaching 1301 items as for now making it big enough to be challenging, small enough to be achievable.
Regions Review
As NomadMania continues to mature, so do our methods. We have taken on the ambitious task of creating the best world travel list for true explorers — and to achieve this, we need your help. You are the experts on your country, and your insights are essential in helping us improve and refine the existing list of regions.
Below is a set of guidelines to help you focus on the right aspects when approaching this important task:
- Look at the country as a whole and reflect deeply on your knowledge of it.
- Check the Optimal Score to see how many regions the country should have.
- Compare the Optimal Score with the current country’s administrative division.
– In most cases, there are more provinces than NomadMania regions allowed. - Consider how existing provinces can be grouped into NomadMania regions.
– Refer to historical, cultural, geographical and traditional contexts (case study). - Ensure that your proposed regions align with the Optimal as closely as possible.
- Discuss it with other NM members and send us your proposal (map + text).
– A great way to do this is by setting up a NM meeting (see how).
This step-by-step guide was developed based on several polls conducted within the NomadMania community.
Get Inspired
Let us show you a few examples so you can stay in the loop and better understand our approach.
Croatia
We will use Croatia as the first example to illustrate our approach. It currently has four regions.
Croatia is up for one more region based on:
- the Optimal Score.
- your agreement in the poll that small countries whose optimal suggests additions should get a region.
What better way to consider the division than to research what Croatia’s ‘common sense’ divisions are.
And here we have it – a common-sense division into five regions which is based on Croatia’s traditional divisions (and a ‘sensible’ grouping of its own 21 administrative regions): Central Croatia, Istria, Kvarner, Dalmatia and Slavonia.
touropia.com/regions-in-croatia-map/
Each of these is historically and geographically distinct and urges the traveller to explore the country’s different regions.
Cambodia
This is how Cambodia is currently presented on NomadMania, divided into three regions.
The Optimal Score for Cambodia is 3.51. This aligns with how the country is traditionally presented in most travel resources.
en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Cambodia
Based on this, we believe that Cambodia should be divided into four regions, structured as shown above.
Ukraine
Read this in-depth case study to see how regions were redefined for Ukraine based on a community vote.
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Original NM regions for Ukraine 
Country’s official administrative division
Cultural Ukrainian regions 
New NM regions for Ukraineopenmind.com.ua/2019/07/08/nomadmania-ukraine/
Please note that this was done back in 2019 and does not align with the current Optimal Score. This example is provided to demonstrate how the local NomadMania community conducted a regional review based on historical, cultural, and traditional context.
Can you do the same for us for YOUR country please?
We will expect your responses until the middle of February, following which we will take action.
Thank you for helping us build a better, more meaningful way to explore the world 🙂
