July 2022: Québec and Italy Reviews, Pool Types Counted
In July 2022 we reviewed Québec and Italy, added about 30 Virgin Active listings and began planning regional notes. We also counted our pools by type for the first time. The Pool of the Month is a resort in Phuket.
Québec and Italy kept us busy in July 2022, and a contact at Virgin Active helped us add about 30 Italian pool listings. We also counted our pools by type for the first time, and this update describes a planned feature for regional notes.
Reader updates
The Edit buttons beside the data points in our listings generate a lot of correspondence. In July we saw more updates from travelers who were evidently from countries other than the one a listing is in. The volume is not yet where we would like it, but it suggests that international travel is on the upswing.
Site activity
We spent July reviewing existing listings in Québec, Canada, and in Italy. Only a few Québec listings remain. Italy is slower going: many online references to Italian pools predate COVID-19, and our attempts to contact them, even in Italian, drew no response. We have little confidence in the quality of our data there.
We did reach someone in the main office of Virgin Active's Italian fitness clubs, who gave us the basic information to add about 30 new listings.
We plan to keep working through Italy, a task likely to take the better part of a year. When Québec is finished, we will begin reviewing the listings in Delaware, Maryland and the District of Columbia.
A planned feature: regional notes
We also began preparing content for a planned new feature: Country, State, County-Region and City Notes. These notes will be organized by geographic region and will appear in every listing within the region they cover.
For example, a listing in Paris, France, might carry a Country Note about dress codes for men: tight-fitting, pocketless suits or briefs only, and no shorts. It might also carry a City Note linking to the city's page on all of its public pools, including seasonal pools that we can't list.
Pool of the Month
Two facilities share our Pool of the Month for July 2022.
The first is Aqwa Itinéris, a pool on wheels. A contact who helps us keep our French listings current told us that learning to swim is now compulsory in French primary schools, yet some areas are so remote that children often spend half a day traveling to the nearest pool for a 40-minute lesson. The solution is a Centre Aquatique Mobile, a truck-trailer with a pool inside. It doesn't qualify for a listing, but we wanted to share the idea.
