National Beach Day: The Most Instagrammable Islands 

National Beach Day is just around the corner, 30 August 2022, providing the perfect opportunity to celebrate the last days of August.

With that in mind, experts at ShowerstoYou.co.ukExternal Link decided to discover the most Instagrammable islands around the world, by compiling a comprehensive seed list of popular islands and collecting the number of hashtags for each.

Here are the top 15 most picturesque islands, ranked …

Ranking

Island

Number of Instagram Hashtags

1

Bali, Indonesia

76,086,685

2

Sicily, Italy

16,667,130

3

Jamaica

14,173,628

4

Sri Lanka

14,067,555

5

Mallorca, Spain

13,764,177

6

Maldives

12,034,911

7

Sardinia, Italy

8,559,178

8

Santorini, Greece

8,419,336

9

Maui, Hawaii

8,226,212

10

The Bahamas

6,671,370

11

Crete, Greece

6,274,376

12

Madeira, Portugal

6,172,993

13

Mauritius

4,979,244

14

Aruba

4,205,749

15

Corsica, France

4,088,720

With a whopping 76,086,685 hashtags, Bali takes the crown for the most Insta-worthy island. A fun fact about the island is there are beaches with black sand. One example is Lovina Beach, which is covered by black sand - a result of cooled volcano lava.

The second place goes to the island of Sicily, which generated a total of 16,667,130 Instagram hashtags. This is actually the largest island in the Mediterranean and is also a home to one of the most active volcanoes in Europe - Mount Etna. Sicily got almost double the number of hashtags Sardinia, in seventh place (8,559,178), received.

Jamaica places third in the study, having 14,173,628 hashtags on the social media platform. Some of the rarest coffees in the world are cultivated on the Caribbean island. And interestingly, it happens to be positioned on top of a large underwater mountain.

And the least Insta-worthy island is … 

The Dalmatian Islands in Croatia, having generated a total of only 15,799 hashtags (76,070,886 less than Bali in first place), place last in the study.

Martin Smith, owner of ShowerstoYou.co.ukExternal Link, provides some insight on why island vacations are so popular: “A vacation on an island provides people with the perfect opportunity for a fun adventure like scuba-diving or snorkeling, allowing them to explore the beauty of the oceans. Another great aspect of an island holiday is that due to most islands’ tropical locations, lovely weather is almost certainly guaranteed. And last but not least, booking an island trip means that people will be able to admire astonishing landscapes that can be found nowhere else, making their stay unforgettable.”

Methodology 

  1. ShowerstoYou.co.ukExternal Link sought to find out the most Instagrammable island in the world.

  2. A comprehensive seed list of popular islands across the world was compiled utilising multiple websites, including: Travel + LeisureExternal Link, Planet WareExternal Link, Condé Nast TravellerExternal Link, TourScannerExternal Link and Road AffairExternal Link.

  3. Only islands that appeared more than once across the different articles were taken into consideration.

  4. A refined list of 34 islands around the world was created.

  5. Following this, each island was manually inputted into InstagramExternal Link utilising the search variation #islandname and the number of hashtags generated was recorded. Search variations, such as: #baliindonesia, #mallorcaisland and #anguillabeaches were used in order to obtain accurate results.

  6. All locations were then ranked based on the amount of hashtags they had generated, so that the most Instagrammable island could be determined.

  7. All data was collected on 13 July 2022 and is subject to change.