I know we've just started documenting which sites have been visited by the community members of this website. I don't know how many of us already enlisted their visited whs but the current minimal number of ones that have done so is 13. It is interesting to observe that this (surely unrepresntative) sample yields a highly significant preference towards European sites. More precisely, among the first 25 all are European and among the first 100 only one is not! I guess this trend may change as more of us participate in this count, but how far do you think this will affect the current results? Or in other words, do you think the byas towards Europe is truly so extreme?

I think most active members on this website are from Europe and since we live in Europe, it is easy to visit sites in Europe.
Right now it is not very representive since only a few people entered the sites they've been to. I think in a few months it'll be much better. We just have to be patient :-)

All the tourism statistics show that, among those sites which "count" entries, the most visited will be in Europe and USA - I don't have immediate access to the figures for the Smokies but it is well into the millions? I guess some Chinese sites will be catching up and there may be a few sites in Japan and India as well.

Once you start looking at Cities/Towns for which there are no direct visitor statistics you could look at figures like "hotel nights" as a proxy to get visitor numbers. But then you have to take into account the local population "visitors" and "passers through" as well. The nature of the site will have a big impact - obviously an enormous number of people are going to "visit" the "Banks of the Seine" since, I guess, a large %age of Parisians and those who live in the suburbs/work there will do so each year whilst hardly registering it!

As stated above, the figures on this site are likely to be even less representative. The Review section at least has the merit of attracting "passing visitors" to the site but they still largely have to speak English to even understand the site (though it has been nice to get the occasional review in eg spanish recently). But to register and fill in all your visits takes a bit more effort/interest and is likely to interest mainly the "enthusiasts" (some might find less complimentary epithets!!). They are going to be reasonably well off and educated travellers from developed countries, ie Europe ( "writ large" Assif!), N America and Japan, who have a "world vision" to fuel and back up their travelling ambitions. Hardly "representative" of all tourists let alone just "visitors"!

I have found more interest in some of the sights which have NOT been reviewed/visited. Not so much the obvious ones like Wrangel Island but, for instance the number of Latin american sites with a "zero" in the reviewed column - Columbia (4) , Brazil (7), Bolivia (2), Costa Rica (2), Cuba (5) - big numbers for countries which aren't that difficult to visit considering there are only 93 unreviewed sites now. I wonder why?

I plan to visit Quebrada de Humahuaca (Argentina) in October: hasn't been reviewed yet but well on the tourist trail. Maybe its name isn't too well-known.

Olinda and Salvador de Bahia in Brazil are really common places to visit. That they have 0 reviews is remarkable for sure. On my trip to Brazil I looked into another unreviewed site, Goias, but that's far from anywhere and doesn't sound appealing enough to warrant a separate journey.

Cuba might suffer from the fact that it's difficult to go there for Americans. There are lots of charter flights from the Netherlands (and probably the rest of Europe) however. The unreviewed sites here include 2 national parks, maybe not the first places to go for sun worshippers.

Colombia can be explained from its violent recent past I think. Also not easy to visit from Europe I believe.

joycevs just visited Bolivia, maybe she can explain why she 'missed' Sucre and Noel Kempff Mercado National Park.

And nobody dares to admit that he/she visited Bordeaux or the Cornish Mining sites!

How many of the unreviewed sites are "Natural" (or even "mixed" - which normally means "Natural" with a bit of "culture" rather than the other way round)? I may be surprised but I suspect they represent a greater proportion of the unreviewed than their proportion of the inscribed total? Natural sites, unless of the "Iconic" variety, are not going to be taken in without a significant interest in "Nature" - I also suspect that our "hot spot" analysis contains disproportionately fewer Natural sites. They tend to be remote and cost a lot of money/time to get to

Columbia is easy enough to get to from Europe - Air France and Iberia or just go via Miami. And a lot of travellers go through it on overland Central/S American trips. Coro in Venzuela is another surprising zero by the way.

I could review "Cornish Mining" but I don't "do" my own country! Bordeaux? Well I have nothing really to say about my visit to it.

Simple reason: I was on an organised group tour and these sites weren't included and they were too far off to visit on my unscheduled days. Potosi was planned though, but the roads were blocked due to strikes by the miners :-(
I did visit Tiwanaku however, and nobody wrote a review about that yet. Odd since there's day tours going there from La Paz