The Internet is a vast and complicated place — especially in the depths of the many travel forums that exists across the Web.
Allianz has done some legwork to parse the most discussed travel topics on Internet forums to reveal what users are talking about, and how that changes depending on the nationality of the user.
As far as methodology, the study authors selected forums from Google using "forum + travel," "forum + tourism" and "forum + holidays" to make their selections.
They then sorted through the most popular forums that had a dedicated travel area that focused on wider travel topics outside of specific destinations.
They then selected 5-10 forums per country, and excluded forums where the nationality wasn't clear. The total sample size was over 3 million comments from a period of 5 years.
For example, here's a comparison of what was included versus what wasn't.
In the United States, the top ten discussed forum categories are:
- Loyalty and mileage programs
- Safety/security
- Air transport & airlines
- Discount travel
- Traveling with technology
- Food & restaurants
- Car rental programs & partners
- Traveler's news
- Online travel booking and bidding agencies
- Equipment
This is a fascinating comparison of traveler priorities in the surveyed countries.
Compare the #1 most discussed topic in the United States, loyalty and mileage programs, to those in other countries: Air transport & air companies (Europe), loyalty & mileage programs (Australia), and traveling with parents (China).
The complete breakdown of what travel topics different nationalities discuss follows below, as does an overview infographic that compares some differences of travel interest across regions.
NB: Speech bubble image courtesy Shutterstock.