Five most popular tourist activities in first half of 2021

Post-pandemic travel recovery has led people to head out to explore outdoors with various tourist activities, a way to address the individual mental health.

An analysis of GlobalData’s Social Media Analytics (SMA) Platform, which identifies and tracks the emerging trends, pain areas, new fields of innovation among discussions of Twitter Influencers and Redditors, has revealed ‘Hiking’ as the most popular tourist activity during the first half (H1) of 2021.

Smitarani Tripathy, influencer analyst at GlobalData lists the top five popular tourist activities in H1 2021.

1. Hiking | 4,740+ discussions

Hiking was more popular tourist activity among Redditors, as compared to Twitter Influencers during H1 2021. Most of the discussions were related to the hiking experiences shared by the community along with adding names of some of the best hiking trails located in different countries across the globe, including Appalachian Trail in Virginia, San Andreas Fault in Southern Carlifornia, and Zematt in Switzerland.

Ms. Tripathy explains: “In this pandemic time, when social distancing has become a new normal way of life, Redditors consider hiking as a preferred way to avoid the tourist crowd and enjoy the nature with hiking adventures and photogenic trails.”

2. Camping | 4,020+ discussions

Camping saw 30% surge in total discussions in H1 2021, over H1 2020. The conversations on camping were largely about best camping spots, safety tips and trip experiences shared by the community on social media. The community also suggested camping as one of the popular outdoor tourist activities, as travelers can easily save money and connect to the nature.

3. Cycling | 1,940+ discussions

Cycling emerged as the third most discussed tourist activity on GlobalData’s SMA platform. The Redditors appreciated cycling tourist activity as they see it as a sustainable, healthy and low-cost mode of travel, which has seen a resurgence in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Redditors have also shared their bike trails to help low bike packers and weekend riders to find easy routes as safety is paramount, whether it is a solo rider or a group. On World Bicycle Day, community posted on how cities dwellers should keep this momentum and attract more people to this socially distant mode of commuting and commit to steeper cut on carbon emissions.

4. Fishing | 730+ discussions

Fishing activity was observed as more popular activity among Twitter Influencers compared to the Redditors. The sentiments of the community were largely positive on fishing activity as they see this as an authentic experience, and sustainable fishing can add values and contribute to the local community in terms of jobs addition. They also discussed about how government in many Island countries are also supporting domestic tourism with various tax and credit incentives.

5. Safari | 530+ discussions

Discussions around Safari were largely based on how national parks and wildlife sanctuaries across different countries are trying to get back on track with the reopening of gates to the tourists as they got dried up with restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.