Ping pong hotels!

Which is the world's most popular sport?

This could come as a surprise to some people but it might actually be table tennis.

According to credible sources, table tennis has more active players than soccer.

There are more than 300 million active table tennis players in the world, compared to about 265 million soccer players. These numbers are referring to people who play table tennis every week for at least 30 minutes. Official numbers are quite hard to find, but it seems that all in all there are a total of 900 million table tennis players worldwide.

Based on these numbers, I thought it was strange that there was no website for people who want to play table tennis while on vacation.

Happy people playing ping pong on vacation. 

If 265 million people play table tennis every week, wouldn't at least some of them want to play table tennis while on vacation, as well? Or when travelling abroad, for work? Table tennis could also be the world's most social sport, a great way to meet new people. A a matter of fact, many of you readers will have played table tennis on you past vacations, as a way to meet new people.

So in order to help all you ping-pong players out there, I have created the world first ping pong hotel website! Welcome to ping-pong-hotels.com

Here you can find the best ping pong hotels in many thousand cities worldwide. The site is updated every week, with new ping pong hotels and pictures of their table tennis facilities.

The site uses AI (=artificial intelligence) in the form of image recognition to find real pictures of table tennis facilities at the hotels. Many hotels have their ping pong tables tucked away in the basements. I want to encourage hotels to put the ping pong tables in their "front and center" social areas, and take nice pictures of them. Like these hotels in Berlin, Barcelona, Paris and Los Angeles. The image recognition is not always perfect, but it will get better over time. But note that if ping-pong-hotels.com says that a hotel has table tennis facilities then this is 100% verified.

Currently, ping-pong-hotels.com lists more than 85.000 hotels with verified table tennis facilities. Do you know which countries have the most table tennis hotels? Here is the top ten list, which might surprise you a little. (I thought Germany would top the list, but I was wrong.)

Italy - 10510 table tennis hotels

France - 8371 table tennis hotels

Spain - 5885 table tennis hotels

Austria - 5041 table tennis hotels

United States - 4422 table tennis hotels

Germany - 4408 table tennis hotels

Russia - 3395 table tennis hotels

Brazil - 3246 table tennis hotels

Hungary - 2473 table tennis hotels

Poland - 2419 table tennis hotels

If you need more info, send an email to ted + @ + tedvalentin.com!