What parameters do people use for determining number of countries visited?
 

Love the badges that you can now attach to your profile. Got me wondering what guidelines people use to determine how many countries they have visited. My rule of thumb is to have spent at least one night there....so I do not count transiting through airports. Belgium is an interesting one for me...have travelled across it 7 times in car, bus and train, but never actually spent a night there...will only count it when on 49 to get me to 50!..on 45 at the moment. Yugoslavia was a single country when I was there in 1985 and so I count it as 1.

I have the ‘one night’ too. Another problem is what counts as a country? Is it UK or England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Island. And what about distant possessions? Is Martinique a separate country or just a bit a France some way away? Or Easter Island and Chile?

Make your own rules and stick to them!

I don’t think it’s necessary to have stayed overnight in some of the smaller nations.

I am under no delusion that my stays in Beijing and Shanghai have given me a stronger sense of China than my day trip to Andorra gave me of that country.

I’ve stayed in Belgium on a few occasions, but nothing beats my first visit, as a child, with family friends from Rotterdam, where we went on a day long outing during National Day and shook hands with the entire Belgian Royal Family “¡Viva la reina Fabiola!”

I also count one night stayed, with an exclusion if it was just a hotel at the airport, even landside (of course we could debate what defines an "airport hotel," though I have no ambiguous examples of that on my current list of 83). I also only count universally recognized independent countries, so not England, Scotland, Wales, etc., even though people in the UK call those countries, nor quasi-countries like French Polynesia, Hong Kong (pre-handover), or Taiwan. Perhaps the list of Member States for this purpose is the only value of the United Nations.

I’m loving the notion that there are folks who have worked for decades in Monaco who have never even visited the Principality under the terms being described here :D

I wouldn't count the one night rule as having visited either.

After the events of certain vote in September 2016, I decided to visit the 28 countries of the EU before the formal date in 2018, then 2019.
So at the start, my own rules were visit the capital city and stand at the parliament*, and get photo.
(I also added get a postcard, daily newspaper of the day I visited, and a local beer, if possible as the trip went on).

I didn't stay the night in a few of the places, but did see a lot of the capitals, often on walking tours or sightseeing buses.


*Thanks Netherlands for making that awkward...

Reminds me of this interesting little video I perused not too long ago asking exactly how many countries there are. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nB688xBYdYI do not use the 'stayed one night' rule both because there are places where I have overnighted as part of a connection that I do not consider having 'visited' and consequently a few countries I have made multiple day trips to yet never overnighted. My brother lived in Eastern Belgium 10 minutes from the Dutch Border and 15 minutes from the German Border. We spent many days in Germany and The Netherlands yet never overnighted. These, in my opinion count as visited.

I did not count Vatican City as a country, but did Count Aruba & Curaçao.

Either way this is just for fun. No one should be taking a badge on a frequent flyer forum too seriously.

I think one night is a reasonable criteria. Personally I go with "Could I tell someone a story about my time there that is more than just purely transit related". Because if all I did was ride a train through a country, or make an airport connection even if it was a long layover, I didn't really visit. But by the same token if I only spent an hour while switching trains there but I did something worth remembering in that hour, I'd count it.

My criterion is similar. I don't count a country that I have passed through without setting foot on ground outside an airport, train, or bus station, so Belgium doesn't count for me but Luxembourg does, because I had an overnight there, but I do count those that I've visited only during a cruise call without staying overnight.

The question for me was whether to count semi-autonomous places such as Curacao, which is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and the Faroe Islands, part of the Kingdom of Denmark. They are both outside the Schengen Area, so I did, but that didn't get me to the next badge level.

Overnight is a useful metric, but a tough one for many. A lot of cruisers can realistically check off a country - being there for 6 or 8 hours in a day. What about the Vatican? Not a lot of people can sleep there.

some should-count criteria: embassies and emissaries, individuals and/or teams appearing in international competitions

I'm only counting those where I leave the point of arrival (airport, train/bus station, cruise port), visit or photograph a couple unique items of interest, have a meal or beverage, and use a restroom

I went to the UN in both Geneva and New York City. Doesn’t that tick off every single country? ;)

This is essentially my definition. I count a visit to a country if I've done something "touristy", meaning I've seen or visited some interesting site. It's pretty squishy, but I think it works well enough. Like others, I disagree with the "spend a night" criteria as I've had plenty of good day trips to visit countries. Andorra comes to mind (or, as others have mentioned, Vatican City), or the day I drove from Montenegro to North Macedonia but stopped for five or so pleasant hours in Tirana, Albania on the way. Then, there's the time I missed a connection in FRA and spent a night in a hotel a few towns over from the airport. I spent a night (and ate a meal) but didn't actually do anything interesting that I wouldn't have done back home, so I don't count that as having been to Germany.

If you've flushed there, you've been there.

I use “boots on the ground” as my rule to consider having been in a country.
I have to have set foot on the ground (or pavement) to count as a visit, so just passing through by train, car, connecting flight, etc., doesn’t count. Currently that doesn’t make in difference in my countries list, but at times it did.

One interesting rule bender was connecting DUB-LHR-LAX. In wasn’t planning on setting foot in the UK, but somehow connecting between terminals at LHR I went through a wrong door and found myself outside. So I literally had boots on the ground (grass) in the UK. Walked to a nearby terminal entrance and continued on. (I have since made a real trip to the UK to remove any ambiguity about really being there.)