The Top 5 Most Visited Cities and How to Share Them With Your Readers

Contrary to the old adage, it’s not a small world after all. It’s a big, wide world, and there’s a lot for the travel blogger to write about – especially heading into a high season. In fact, there can be so much to choose from that you risk missing what people are most interested in reading about and doing.

One way to strategically narrow down your subject matter is to listen to the data. What will be the most visited cities this summer? And what do they most want to do there?

These are not rhetorical questions. New Tiqets data reveals the top five most visited cities in the world, who’s visiting them, and which top attractions they’re buying tickets to. This information should help you decide on the cities and attractions most worth writing about.

Trending destination #1: Rome

“A fool is one who admires other cities without visiting Rome,” according to Italian poet Francesco Petrarca, and a lot of modern-day romantics, history buffs, and foodies certainly agree. Rome has always been a top destination for our museum and attraction partners. In fact, a good quarter of summer holiday business is generated in Roma.

These are visitors from all over, but in the first few months of 2022, the dominant base of travelers to Rome has been French, British, and Dutch. As for the attractions they’re most likely to visit, the three most popular for this summer are:

The Colosseum

The Vatican Museums

St. Peter’s Basilica

How to write about Rome: One of the ways you can differentiate your travel writing is to talk about ways visitors can optimize their experience to a popular location. For instance, skip-the-line tickets and guided tours – two of the types of options you can find in Tiqets’ inventory – aren’t just value-adds for your readers, but more lucrative products for you to sell.

Top product to offer your readers: For Rome in particular, international travelers tend to buy multi-passes such as the Rome Tourist Card or the Vatican City Pass. There are a lot of benefits to promoting them in particular, as we wrote about recently in a blog on how to increase affiliate sales.

Trending destination #2: Barcelona

A city of two languages (Spanish and Catalan), the place Picasso called home, and the location of nine UNESCO World Heritage Sites, Barcelona is number two on our list of most visited cities worldwide. It’s the location of one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world, which tops our list of the three most-purchased tickets in Barcelona:

Sagrada Familia

Park Guell

The Hop-on-Hop-off Bus Barcelona

How to write about Barcelona: Right now, international travel to Barcelona originates largely in France, Italy, and Germany. But there’s another crucial audience you should keep in mind: over 10% of Tiqets’ business in Barcelona comes from locals. Your travel blog might appeal to either or both.

Top product to offer your readers: For international visitors in particular, the Barcelona Pass & Gaudi Bundle are within our top three best-selling passes worldwide!

Trending destination #3: Paris

Gay Paree, a term that harkens back to the glorious Belle Époque – the happy-go-lucky period in France before the World Wars, when culture and the arts flourished – still well describes this beautiful City of Light.

Well over a billion visitors came to Paris in the year before the pandemic, and we expect that number to bounce right back this summer.

Domestic travel in Paris is equally important, and as Tiqets data shows, over 41% of our ticket sales to Paris can be attributed to French visitors. Outside of France, those from Great Britain, Germany, and the US are the most frequent tourists to touch down in Paris. Here’s what they most like to do:

The Louvre

Musee d’Orsay

Fondation Louis Vuitton

How to write about Paris: The Louvre Museum: E-Ticket is by far the most-sold product Tiqets sees in Paris. It’s also one of the top-rated attractions, with a review score of over 4.8 on Tiqets.com, and has the option to specifically choose from various guided tour options and exhibitions. Recommending to your readers that they book a trip to the Louvre is a pretty safe bet.

Top product to offer your readers: To give your visitors more options, convenience, and access to multiple attractions, consider promoting The Paris-Seine Pass, which provides everything you need in one ticket. This pass includes the Louvre and other iconic experiences such as the Eiffel Tower, a sightseeing cruise on the Seine, and a citywide audio guide.

Trending destination #4: Amsterdam

The capital of the Netherlands is known for its quirks and charms: an elaborate canal system, the Red Light district, and over 50 museums within a fairly small, walkable city. Amsterdam attracts travelers from all directions: France, Germany, Great Britain, and the US being the top four.

Amsterdam’s top attractions are:

The Van Gogh Museum

The Canal Cruise

Fabrique des Lumières

How to write about Amsterdam: While you can’t go wrong waxing prosaic about these three, for families, the Artis Royal Zoo and Nemo Science Museum are two other very popular attractions. So if your travel blog has a healthy family audience, that’s another way you could go.

Top product to offer your readers: The Amsterdam Pass provides access to those top three attractions in one go and includes transportation from Schiphol Airport to the city center, along with two audio guides.

Trending destination #5: London

London is one of the greatest tourist destinations in the world. Over 300 languages are spoken within its borders, and this small but incredibly vibrant and diverse city has the largest urban population in the UK.

Yet, there is always room for more! In the last three months, 60% of the visitors to London were domestic, but that will change as international travel picks up again. French, Italian, Dutch, and American visitors are four of the most prevalent, and here’s what they all like to do in London:

Kew Gardens & Kew Palace

The Tower of London

The ZSL London Zoo

How to write about London: A lot of London’s museums are free, so it’s important to include a mix of free and paid venues to build trust with your readers and make some commission on their purchases. The most popular paid attraction in London is Kew Gardens, followed by the Tower of London.

Top product to offer your readers: The London City Card is a great option for combining a visit to the Tower of London with a hop-on hop-off city cruise and a London audio guide.

Top tips for promoting these trending holiday destinations

While these are some of the most visited cities, how you write about them is just as important as where you write about. Here are three tips for how to position the places you write about in a way that will lead to the most ticket sales.

Tip #1: Give your audience choices

Say you’re writing about the Rijksmuseum. One way to give your readers more choice in the tickets they buy is to link directly to the venue page on Tiqets.com, which may have more than one ticketing option available. In the case of Rijksmuseum, visitors can choose between a simple entry ticket, entry with a two-hour guided tour, or an Amsterdam City Card that allows them to visit multiple museums and attractions with one entry fee. It’s fine to sell the simple, straightforward ticket, but if your readers choose the second or third option, your commission increases for that transaction. In fact, Tiqets passes allow you to earn up to three times more commission per transaction.

Tip #2: Use Tiqets’ widgets smartly

As a Tiqets affiliate, you have several different kinds of products at your disposal to offer readers. If your post is written to inspire readers who may be looking for ideas, the Discovery Widget includes an image of the promoted attraction, a review score, and the price. If readers are ready to buy, you might consider the Availability Widget, Tiqets’ best-converting widget. This widget provides specific context into the attraction: what’s included, the price, the review score, and any other practical information.

Don’t forget to use direct venue and product links within your text to the right Tiqets landing pages. Read more about the best ways to do this in boost your sales with 3 marketing affiliate tools.

Tip #3: Help them plan their whole trip

International travelers rarely visit a city to do just one thing. In a recent Tiqets survey, we discovered that people on business trips or leisure vacations visit an average of almost 3 attractions. Download the report to learn more. If you’re writing about Rome, consider working up a sample itinerary – and link it to a city pass. By providing your readers with specific routes and ideas, they get easy inspiration, and you get higher commissions.

Start writing. Start selling.

Data is an awesome accompaniment to the creativity of your travel blogging, and with these facts in mind, your travel business can get a little more strategic.

If you’ve already taken the first step to create an affiliate relationship with Tiqets, our best practices and tips are a part of the package. If you haven’t, join our affiliate program and start earning commissions today.