July 2019: Kyrgyzstan Added and New South Wales Under Review
In July 2019 we added our first listings in Kyrgyzstan and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, reaching 204 countries, and reviewed New South Wales. We also explain how we flag pools that fall outside our usual listing rules.
July 2019 brought our first listings in Kyrgyzstan and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. This pool listings update also covers the review of New South Wales in Australia and explains how we flag pools that fall outside our usual listing rules.
New countries
In July we added our first listings in Kyrgyzstan, 11 of them, and in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The directory now covers 204 countries.
Listing reviews
We began reviewing the listings in New South Wales, Australia, at the end of June and are about two-thirds of the way through the 280 or so listings there.
When New South Wales is finished, we plan to go to the United Kingdom to review the Channel Islands and a few counties in England. Then we will return to Massachusetts, and perhaps Rhode Island, before going back to Germany to tackle Hessen, Lower Saxony and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania.
How we flag unusual listings
Some years ago we relaxed the listing requirements for pools in Australia. The summer swimming season there is longer than in most places in the Northern Hemisphere, and many pools that swimmers would want to know about were not being listed.
In the old site format it was hard to flag a listing included as an exception. Since the site changed in August 2018, a colored note in the map marker text and in the list of listings beneath the map highlights pools that may be outside the norm for Places2Swim. As we review these listings, we add a note such as "Open from October through March" to show that the pool is open for less than eight months of the year, the standard we apply everywhere else.
We have given the same treatment to ocean enclosures. These unheated pools may be open year-round, but they are a tougher proposition in the colder winter months. We also researched sea water temperatures near each listed ocean enclosure and added them to the listings. Depending on the depth of the pool and the weather, the water in an enclosure may be a couple of degrees warmer or cooler than the sea it draws from, but the figures give you an idea of what to expect.
Database statistics
- As of July 31, 2019: the database lists 24,574 swimming facilities in 204 countries and 13,495 cities.