Revealed: Europe’s Most Popular Beautiful Villages

Revealed: Europe’s Most Popular Beautiful Villages

Social media is a great spur-on for many travellers, with online platforms allowing those lucky enough to go interrailing across Europe to visit these beautiful locations to share their picture-perfect shots and incite travel envy in many.

Inspired, Uswitch.com wanted to uncover Europe’s most popular villages on social media, according to the number of times they have been featured on Instagram and Pinterest. By analysing 40 different locations in the world, Uswitch.com were able to rank the top 10 most popular beautiful villages in Europe.

For the full study, please see the Uswitch.com blog post under https://www.uswitch.com/mortgages/guides/worlds-most-beautiful-villages …

The top 10 most beautiful villages in Europe

Top Three

Uswitch.com can reveal that the most beautiful village in Europe (and the world!) is Oia, Greece. Located in Santorini, the village is widely known for its picturesque, bright white buildings and brilliant blue sea. A hugely popular tourist destination, combining Instagram posts and Pinterest pins result in 1,612,671 appearances on social media—over 90 percent more than another Greek village, Folegandros, which comes in 8th place (154,222).

Ranking second is Göreme, Turkey. With 1,129,300 total appearances on the social media platforms analysed, Göreme is home to many rock-chiselled churches and is famous for regular hot air balloon rides.

With a combined total of 799,213 posts, in third place is Hallstatt, Austria. This lakeside village is considered a fairy-tale by some, with UNESCO declaring it a World Heritage Site in Austria back in 1997. Interestingly, Hallstatt has the highest volume of pins out of the top three places (4,887).

Bottom three

Rounding off the top 10, in eighth place, is Wengen, Switzerland. Located in the Swiss Alps, Wengen is popular for its timber chalets and 19th Century French architecture. The village has a total 122,137 posts on the social media platforms analysed!

Ranking ninth is Portree, on the Isle of Skye (Scotland), featured 119,875 times on Instagram and Pinterest - managing only half of the posts achieved by Tobermory, another Scottish village which comes in 5th place (242,210 combined posts). Surrounded by hills, the village of Portree is the capital of the island and located on the eastern side.

Finally, Uswitch.com can reveal that, in 10th place, is Albarracin, Spain. With a fortress-like enclosure, Albarracin has a total number of 107,998 combined posts on Pinterest and Instagram, giving it 93% less appearances compared to first place Oia (Greece).

Worldwide rankings

Uswitch.com further compared villages across the world. Here are the top five …

• Oia, Greece (1,612,671)
• Halong Bay, Vietnam (1,168,018)
• Göreme, Turkey (1,129,300)
• Hallstatt, Austria (799,213)
• Mission Beach, Australia (608,796)

For the full worldwide rankings, and the top villages in Asia please see the Uswitch.com blog post under https://www.uswitch.com/mortgages/guides/worlds-most-beautiful-villages …

Methodology

• Uswitch.com sought to uncover the most popular beautiful villages in the world, according to social media
  
  
• The villages contained in the dataset cover a breadth of worldwide locations, and were obtained from multiple sources using in-house metrics. The full list of sources can be found on the accompanying Excel document
  
  
• To focus our research, only locations that met National Geographic’s definition of village were selected for further analysis: “Some geographers specifically define a village as having between 500 and 2,500 inhabitants”
  
  
• The most recent official government census population data and other relevant sources were used to discover the number of residents of each locatios
  
  
• Total Instagram hashtags counts were obtained for each of the remaining 40 villages in our sample. Where appropriate, variations of each hashtag were also considered
  
  
• Uswitch.com then scraped Pinterest for the number of pins connected to each village. Specific search parameters were used to ensure the relevancy of pins
  
  
• Pinterest and Instagram figures were then combined to create an overall popularity ranking
  
  
• The rankings were further divided by continent. Please note that Georgia and Turkey, whilst classified by the United Nations as Asian countries, have been included in both Asian and European rankings due to their geographical, political, and historical connections to Europe
  
  
• All data was collected on 05/10/2021 and is subject to change

Credit: https://www.uswitch.com/mortgages/guides/worlds-most-beautiful-villages