Nomadic Matt Forum

Nomadic Matt is a New York Times bestselling author whose blog attracts over one million people each month on the look out for travel advice and tips. His website contains a number of helpful sections, from how to save for a trip to which travel insurance companies to buy with, while the forum boasts a community of nearly 9000 people.

The Nomadic Matt Forum is divided into three different sections – Welcome, On The Road, and Destinations – with a number of categories contained in each, ranging from travel companions to health & safety. One of my favourite categories, however, is ‘Travel books’ where people can discuss their favourite travel-related literature, much in the same way as a book club. People also post free eBooks that can be downloaded, as well as helpful recommendations for travel guides and themed novels.

Another aspect of the forum that I like in particular is the ability to view the profiles of each member, with details such as birthday, gender, location, interests and rank, which factors in the length of time they have been a member and the number of times they have contributed. Most profiles also come with a short biography, so you can get to know a bit about them, as well as view their activity on the website. This makes for a much more personal forum, almost like Facebook or Twitter, where not only the content of the posts is important, but also the person behind the post.

One issue I found with the Nomadic Matt Forum was the lack of filters to allow users to narrow down results and quickly find topics they are interested in. The addition of this, and perhaps a ‘Sort By’ tool would make the website more comprehensive.

David Jones

I am a professional travel writer and travel enthusiast who traveled the world twice, so I am sharing my firsthand knowledge about everything related to travel and spending time abroad.