Two stunning African cities named among world’s most Instagrammed destinations

This year, South African city, Cape Town and Lagos state in Nigeria made the cut, becoming the World’s Most Instagrammed destinations in Africa, according to rankings released by Hoppa. After almost nine years since Instagram was launched, the app continues to attract scores of users to the extent of helping travellers decide where they want to visit next.

Statistics from travel booking site, Hoppa, shows that a growing number of travellers choose destinations, hotels, and restaurants based on photos they see on the app.

Three years ago when Hoppa set out to find where in the world has been Instagrammed the most, New York came on top, followed by London and Paris. Two African destinations – Cairo, the capital of Egypt and Kenyan capital, Nairobi – were the World’s Most Instagrammed destinations on the continent.

The transport comparison website compared and contrasted the results with the study it produced in 2016 and illustrated the findings with three categories.

One reveals the top 50 Instagram destinations, ranked according to how many times they have been hash-tagged. Another contains top 10s for Instagram categories by location – which cities are top for selfies, scenery pictures, pictures of couples, sexually suggestive images, and food snaps.

The third infographic takes the top 10 most Instagrammed places and reveals the most popular types of pictures associated with them – selfies, scenery, couples, food, shopping, groups, wildlife, alcohol, sexual or marketing.

Cape Town ranked 44th globally, two places after Lagos. Most of the photographs shared in the beautiful South African city are of the scenery, including the ocean, wine estates, Table Mountain, and so on. A category breakdown for Cape Town includes; Scenery – 10 per cent; Marketing – 15 per cent; Sexually suggestive – 5 per cent; selfie – 10 per cent, and wildlife – 4 per cent.

With more than 10 million hashtags on Instagram, Nigeria’s commercial city, Lagos, emerged 42nd on the list and first in Africa. The economic and cultural powerhouse of Nigeria is known for its tranquil beach resorts, boutiques, cultural artefacts and craftworks, as well as, its bubbly nightlife, hence photos shared on the app are largely from these locations.

Overall, London topped the list as the World’s Most Instagrammed destinations for 2019, pushing Paris into second place and New York into third.

Meanwhile, Berlin is the most ‘selfied’ location in the world, overtaking London, which held the title in 2016.