The MapMyWorld Blog
Travel record tips, UNESCO guides, country stats, and updates from MapMyWorld.
Which Country Did You Land In? Airports That Sit in One Country and Serve Another
Basel's airport stands in France, Geneva has a French door and Tijuana's runway is reached from San Diego. How to log cross-border airports so your country count stays honest.
One Trip or Two? Four Rules for Where a Trip Ends and the Next Begins
A conference that turned into a beach week, a gap year, a layover night. Four rules for deciding where one trip ends, and why the boundary changes every number in your record.
How to Write Travel Notes You'll Still Understand in Ten Years
Most travel notes are written for the person you were that evening. Six rules for notes your future self can actually use, and where each kind of note belongs.
Work Backwards From Departure: When Each Pre-Trip Task Is Really Due
Most pre-trip lists start with packing and end with the passport. Date each task by the slowest person or office involved instead, and the urgent items surface months early.
Deposits, Refunds and Card Holds: How to Record Money That Moves Outside the Trip
A deposit paid in February, a card hold released a fortnight late, a refund that came back at a different exchange rate. Seven rules for recording the money that moves before and after a trip, so the total still matches your statement.
Which Category Does It Belong In? Seven Rules for Sorting Travel Spending
A hotel breakfast, a resort fee, a shared dinner: seven rules for sorting the ambiguous purchases on a trip, so your category totals stay comparable from one trip to the next.
Visited, Lived or Bucket List: What Each Status Does to Your Record
Every place carries a status, and the status decides what counts, what colour it paints and what happens to its country. What each one does, the two places the app leaves your record out of step, and a routine that keeps it honest.
Logging a Place With No Signal: What Gets Saved and What Waits
"Works offline" is three separate promises: the app opens, you can read, you can write. Here is exactly which parts of a place survive a save with no signal, what is dropped, and what happens when your phone reconnects.
Why a Planned Trip Doesn't Show Its Airports Yet
A trip's status, not the date you flew, decides when its airports and country get recorded. Here's exactly when that happens, and why there's sometimes a day's lag.
Crossed the Equator or the Arctic Circle? Why the Painted Lines Are in the Wrong Place
The Mitad del Mundo line is 240 metres off the equator, and the Arctic Circle has drifted over a kilometre past Santa Claus Village. How to record a latitude milestone that stays true.
Have You Seen the New Seven Wonders? What Counts as Seeing One
The New Seven Wonders came from a 2007 public vote, so nobody defines "seen it" for you. Three counting rules, three different totals, and the 50 km rule MapMyWorld uses (plus where it falls short).
How to Rate the Places You've Been So the Stars Still Mean Something
Most personal travel ratings end up as a wall of fours and fives. Why memory inflates them, and a six-step way to build a rating scale that still means something ten years from now.
How Many Island Nations Have You Been To? Three Rules, Three Totals
Japan, Ireland and Australia can make one, two or three island nations depending on the rule. Here are the three questions that decide the number, and the exact list MapMyWorld counts.
How Many Days Have You Spent Abroad? Three Rules, Three Answers
One week in Lisbon can be nine days abroad, or eight, depending on whose rule you use. How the calendar, border and midnight rules count travel days, and what your record needs so you can work out any of them.
How Far Have You Actually Flown? Four Ways to Measure One Flight
London to New York is 5,555 km, or 5,540, or whatever the aircraft flew that day. Why one flight has four distances, which one belongs in your record, and a spreadsheet formula for your lifetime total.
Which City Is the Capital? Counting Capitals When a Country Has Two
The Netherlands, Bolivia, South Africa and Malaysia each split their capital between cities. How split capitals work, which city to count, and exactly how MapMyWorld decides whether you have been.
How Many Continents Have You Been To? It Depends on the Rules
Seven sounds tidy until you ask where Europe ends, whether Sinai is Asia, and whether King George Island counts as Antarctica. Three decisions to settle before you quote the number, and exactly how MapMyWorld counts continents.
IATA vs ICAO: Which Airport Code Belongs in Your Travel Record?
IATA codes are the three letters on your bag tag; ICAO codes are the four letters in the flight plan. What each system is for, why codes like ORD and EWR look wrong, and which one belongs in your record of every airport you have flown through.
How to Share Your Travel Map With Someone — and Exactly What They See
Letting someone see your record is two different mechanisms, not one: a named invitation you can withdraw, or a public page at a URL you cannot. Here is how each works, the complete list of what the other person sees, and the four things to check before you send anything.
Which Exchange Rate Should You Use When You Record Travel Spending?
One coffee in Bangkok, four defensible numbers. A plain look at reference rates, network rates and what your statement actually charged — which one belongs in your record, and the four places MapMyWorld's own conversion is wrong.
How to Log a Road Trip That Crosses Six Countries
You drove through six countries. Two months later your map shows two. Why a road trip is the hardest kind of trip to record, the three ways a country actually reaches your map, and what the end of passport stamping in Europe means for anyone hoping to reconstruct one later.
How to Back Up a Travel Record You Spent Years Building
Trail Wallet ended with its backup system already broken. Google gave Maps Timeline users six months and then deleted the rest. Here is the five-minute audit that tells you whether your travel history would survive the same notice, what CSV and JSON each preserve, and exactly what our own export leaves out.
How to Log a Trip While You're Still On It
Reconstructing a trip from memory in March is expensive, and the result is always thinner than the real thing. Here is the four-minute daily pass that prevents it: what decays fastest, why a card statement is a poor backup, and where our app just makes you type.
What Counts as Visiting a Country? Pick a Rule and Write It Down
193, 195, 249 or 330 — the answer depends on whose list you use. And no standards body will tell you whether a layover counts. Here are the four common country lists, the five visit rules travellers actually apply, and why writing yours down settles the argument for good.
How to Stop Guessing What Your Trips Actually Cost
You know what the flight cost. The rest of the trip is a card statement that arrives three weeks late in the wrong currency. Here is what to write down at the time, how per-day currency conversion works, and the one number worth keeping from every trip.
How to Record Every UNESCO World Heritage Site You've Visited
Most travellers cannot say how many World Heritage sites they have reached, and the guess is wrong in both directions. A method for rebuilding an accurate list from evidence — plus what our reference list still gets wrong, and why the Free plan is a poor fit for this particular job.
How to Log Every Airport You Pass Through
Layovers do not feel like places, so they go unrecorded — and most people undercount the airports they have been through by half. A practical method for rebuilding the list from email, photos and passport stamps, plus an honest account of what our airport log will not do.
How to Log Your Travel History Retroactively
Twenty years of travel and no record of it. You will not remember it all, so stop trying: here is the evidence-first method for rebuilding a retroactive travel log from receipts, photo libraries and old passports, plus an honest account of where MapMyWorld helps and where it makes you type.
MapMyWorld vs Visited: Is the Country Count Enough?
Visited colours in your map better than almost anything else. An honest comparison from the team behind MapMyWorld: what the country count answers, what it cannot, where Visited is genuinely cheaper, and where we fall short.
A Travel App That Doesn't Follow You: The Case for Typing It In
Background location capture looks like a free gift until the defaults change. In December 2024 Google deleted years of Timeline history for anyone who missed the notice. MapMyWorld has no background capture at all — here is why we make you type it in, and what that costs you.
Wanderlog Alternative: What Happens to Your Trip After You Come Home?
Wanderlog is a strong trip planner, and for planning it is hard to beat. But planners go quiet the moment you land. An honest look at what a planner is for, where it stops, and what a permanent record of where you have actually been looks like instead.
Polarsteps vs MapMyWorld: Which One Actually Records Your Travel?
Polarsteps tracks where you moved. It doesn't answer what a trip cost, which UNESCO sites you saw, or how many airports you've transited. A category-by-category comparison for people deciding between
Trail Wallet Has Been Discontinued — Here Are the Best Travel Expense Tracker Alternatives (2026)
Trail Wallet shut down and left a gap that's hard to fill. Here's an honest look at the best alternatives — including one that tracks expenses inside a complete travel record.
Best Apps to Track Your Travel History in 2026 (Honest Comparison)
You know your country count. You can't answer three basic questions about your last trip. An honest comparison of every app built for recording travel history — not planning it.