There's been a recent flurry of articles on European countries and cities launching efforts to lure digital nomads.
Our favorite is Sifted's article The world’s first digital nomad village, one year on.
It covers a digital nomad village on the Portuguese island of Madeira.
For those not familiar with Madeira, it's a sub-tropical island off the coast of Morocco.
In addition to nice weather and spectacular scenery, the island also offers fast Internet and a time zone relatively convenient to Europe and much of the U.S.
Our favorite article quote is on one of the downsides of being a digital nomad in Madeira - too much social activity.
Key quote from a community manager at the digital nomad village:
“It can be very social. In high season for nomads, which is in March until June, you might have to make a conscious effort to take a break from all the social interaction, depending on your personal social battery. You just have so many activities every day that you could participate in, that sometimes you don’t even notice when it’s a little bit too much and you just need the day off,” she says.
It's not just Madeira looking to attract digital nomads.
Bloomberg's City Lab article Can Remote Workers Keep Venice Afloat? covers Venywhere, a program designed to attract digital nomads to Venice. Venywhere describes itself as:
A platform that gives you everything you need to live a unique, safe and frictionless remote worker experience in Venice.
More broadly, European Cities Marketing recently released Understand the World of the Digital Nomad - How Cities Can Tap Into New Sources of Traveling Global Talent.
This guide is meant to help cities across Europe develop programs to attract digital nomads.
The reasons cities and countries want to attract digital nomads is they spend more money than tourists, don't put much strain on public services, create jobs for locals - and sometimes even start local businesses.
Expect more cities and countries to offer digital nomad visas and other specialized programs to attract remote workers and digital nomads.
See our Digital Nomad section for more on this topic.
