For week 24 of #MakeoverMonday, we’re looking at Tourism Density for select countries around the world. The data comes to us from Intrepid Travel. Here’s how they originally visualized this data:

What works well

• I like the panel/grid look
• They did a good job separating the two categories of countries
• There’s a lot of text included to help the reader understand what it’s trying to convey.

What could be improved or doesn’t work so well

• The colors are confusing to me. Take a look at the “Overtourism” group. The color of the largest circle is not the same color throughout that group. I would expect that all the “Tourist” circles are the same color throughout.
• Circles and comparing area are generally a bad idea because our eyes/minds have a difficult time comparing different area.
• The percentages are a bit confusing. I would like to see that metric on a more understandable scale.

Here’s the makeover I settled on

Let’s break it down

• Since my version would be viewed on a computer screen, I opted for a vertical view. If this were to be printed I might stick with the horizontal view.
• I got rid of the overlapping circles and went with a connected dot plot to show the variance between tourists & locals.
• I stuck with separating the countries by over/undertourism.
• I shaded my section titles for a visual break.
• I sorted the countries by the number of tourists. I suppose I could add the option for the user to choose how to sort.
• Lastly, for the percentage metric that I didn’t care for in the original, I chose to calculate a ratio that’s is more understandable. I multiplied the percentage by 100. So now the metric is the number of tourists per 100 locals.

Until next time!