Travel is becoming a competitive sport

None of that was enough to dissuade Ted Nims, an American who recently spent a week there and, in the process, checked off another country on his list: his 191st. The UN has 193 member states. Mr Nims is among a growing number of “country counters” trying to visit them all. Last year a record 82 people claimed to have achieved the feat of travelling to all 193 countries, according to NomadMania, an online hub for obsessive adventurers.

When the Travellers’ Century Club launched in 1954, only a fortunate few could boast of having been to 100 countries, the minimum required to join. Today the social group is nearly 2,000-strong, having enjoyed what it calls a “pretty significant upswing” in recent years. Serious travellers are whiling away hours on platforms such as NomadMania and Most Travelled People, where there are leaderboards and debates about what counts as a visit. (An airport transit is acceptable to some but dismissed by the most hardcore as too easy.)

So much time on the road may sound like solitary play. But hostels and homestays offer a lot of fun and social contact, says Carol Wong, a Malaysian who recently visited Samoa (her 142nd country). It is the “fancy hotel” that is “very lonely”, she says. Online, travel addicts share tips and socialise. Some destinations are so obscure that visitors seek advice from Facebook groups such as Every Passport Stamp, where questions range from the mundane (“Is the ferry from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan operating?”) to the unusual (“Has anyone ever explored Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands?”).

Seeing new places is all the rage, even if you do not want to fill up your whole passport with new stamps. About half of Brits polled last year by ABTA, a travel industry association, planned to visit a new country, compared with 18% a decade earlier. “There’s a braggadocious element,” says Seth Borko of Skift, a travel-news website, who points to the impact of social media.

The scourge of overtourism plays a part, too, as travellers want to skip packed piazzas. Rising numbers of Americans travelling to Europe are opting for small towns or the countryside, according to Skift. The world’s top ten most visited countries saw their share of international arrivals decline from about 60% in 1980 to 40% in 2024.

“I like to see places that aren’t as touched by tourists,” says Shang Qian Song, a 34-year-old Singaporean visiting Tuvalu, which may become one of the first countries to disappear because of rising sea levels. If you’re counting on becoming a country counter, better pack your bag.