First stop, Iceland.

Over the past few months, I've found myself asking, is it my social media circle or is Iceland an unusually popular place to visit among my friends? And like any normal Facebook stalker, I gathered data and analyzed global flight trends to test my hypothesis. What I find is not only are more people visiting Iceland, but Iceland's growth in air traffic is outpacing Europe's historically most-visited countries.

Map and Timeline of Airline Traffic to Keflavic Airport

Using air traffic data from Eurostat and route data from OpenFlights, I've mapped routes flying into Iceland's Keflavic airport from around the world. In the dashboard above, the measure is set to the number of passengers carried to Iceland. The map provides an idea of where flights originate from, but the true storyteller of this visual is the timeline below the map. The number of passengers arriving into Keflavic from the UK, Germany, and the US increased by an average of 192,000 passengers from 2013 to 2015, accounting for large gains in Iceland total air traffic.
Don't be mistaken by thinking Iceland is anywhere close to the numbers of Europe's busiest airports. Flights traveling in and out of Paris peak each year around 8.5 million passengers carried. What is noticeable, however, is that the percentage growth for Iceland air traffic continues to be higher than many other European countries. During 5 out of the last 6 six years, Iceland air traffic grew by 20% or more in most categories. That growth is visible in the interactive graph below.

Percentage Increase in Air Traffic
Use the filters on the right to compare Iceland to other EU countries.

I can't say with certainty why Iceland is suddenly becoming a popular travel destination. I'll be traveling there in a month so maybe afterwards I can provide more insight, but I'll acknowledge the stopover policy was what enticed me. In short, passengers fly to Iceland and stay up to seven days on a stopover with no extra airfare cost before departing to their destination. The policy has existed since the 1960's and in 2014 the airline began a social media campaign using #mystopover to promote the deal. Correlation doesn't imply causation, but the timeline of their social media campaign follows well with the timeline in the first viz.

Along with the growth in air travel, the tourism economy of Iceland is growing as well.  Tourism's direct contribution to Iceland's GDP was 6.8% in 2013, grew to 8.2% by 2015, and is predicted to continue rising according to World Travel & Tourism Council reports.  I'll be curious to see if the UK's exit from the EU impacts these numbers and projections, but, regardless, it's evident that Iceland, is hot.