Destinations work tirelessly to build their reputations on the global travel market. But whether it’s family-friendly golden beaches or ‘coolcation’ clear mountain air, to sustain that reputation they must also deliver against their marketing promises.

Our new global travel tool, TACTIQ, tracks exactly which destinations do that, using the ‘recommend’ metric. It asks travellers in the five biggest tourism markets (which provide two fifths of all global tourists) which destinations they would recommend to their friends, family and colleagues.

And while TACTIQ is ‘always on’, meaning that results are constantly changing, the current snapshot makes for interesting reading.

Looking across all international leisure travellers in each market, there are two standout performers – France and Australia. These destinations are the only ones to feature in the top 15 recommended places in all of our markets among international traveller audience. And it’s France which just pips its competitor, recommended by an average of 22% of respondents, compared to 21% for Australia.

Featuring in the top 15 in four of our five markets are Italy and Canada. It’s only in India that Italy doesn’t make the top ranking, whereas Canada doesn’t make our top 15 chart among Chinese travellers in June wave.

Nonetheless, both have strong average Recommend metrics. For Italy, it’s 21% with the country coming up top of the ranking among German travellers and second among Americans, while for Canada it’s 20%. It comes up trumps among travellers in neighbouring USA.

Finally, a host of countries feature in the top 15 recommendation in three out of our five markets.

Japan, New Zealand, Spain and Greece all enjoy this status, with Japan in the top five for both Chinese and Indian travellers and Spain in the top three for Brits and Germans. They are joined by the US, UK and Germany – where we don’t allow respondents to recommend their own market for methodological reasons. Despite recent political noise about the country, the US is the second most strongly recommended destination for both British and Indian travellers.

TACTIQ also allows users to segment audiences by a range of demographics, interests and behaviours and in coming weeks we’ll look at this data from the point of view of sports travellers, Gen Z and affluent travellers. Share your email address to make sure you don’t miss out.

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