Bucket list attractions travellers want to see in SA

MOST people have put their travel plans on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic, but that hasn’t stopped them from dreaming of locations to visit when travel is safe again.

The folks at Budget Direct decided to explore the “Bucket List” hashtag on Instagram to see which destinations and landmarks people were dreaming of visiting when they felt comfortable to travel again.

Budget Direct extracted location data from a sample of 26 072 Instagram posts tagged with the bucket list hashtag and then extrapolated this data to estimate destination counts across all 10.6 million posts.

They added the results in an interactive heat map.

In South Africa, the research revealed that the Kruger National Park in Mpumalanga was the top destination people wanted to visit when they travelled to the country.

The national park amassed 4 486 hashtags.

Mala Mala Game Reserve and Sabi Sands Game Reserve, both in Mpumalanga, were also top bucket list destinations, receiving 2 447 hashtags each.

Travellers also wanted to see the Boulders penguin colony and Sanddrif Holiday Resort in the Western Cape. Both had 1 223 hashtags.

Overall, Cappadocia in Turkey was the most popular #bucketlist destination on Instagram with 30 994 hashtags. Dubai in the United Arab Emirates took the spot as the most desired city with 82 785 hashtags.

The top natural wonder on Instagram’s #bucketlist is Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, with 7 341 tags.

Tanzania also tops the #bucketlist beaches list.

People wanted to visit the white sands of Nungwi Beach in the Mjini Magharibi Region, followed by Pig Beach in the Exuma region of The Bahamas and Waikiki Beach in Hawaii.