As we head out of the summer (or whatever passed for it here in London) we thought it was time to take another of our semi-regular looks at where we’re headed for the rest of the year.

This time around, instead of just plotting the popular destinations, which don’t change significantly from season-to-season - we’d try and surface the outliers.

That is, the extraordinary places that have attracted significant numbers of people from the beginning of September til the end of November.

To do this, we used a property of our database we call excitement, which the other Matt - MattB - can tell you all about, in his by-now-traditional “here comes the science bit”:

When we set out to summarise the travel outlook for the end of 2008, we wanted to do more than just list destinations by simple popularity. As frequent travellers we’re interested in what’s off the beaten path: the anomalies in travel patterns as well as the hubs.

To do this, we created a metric that compares activity in a location over a time period to the average activity there. For each active trip destination, we look at its six-month history to see how many trips have gone there and how many travellers live there.

We then divide one by the other. This means that centres of travel like London, Paris, San Francisco and Tokyo get a relatively low score, and places that are suddenly popular will spring to the top of the list.

And the top-ten destinations in terms of excitement this Autumn, are as follows:

• Black Rock City, NV, United States
• Mandelieu, France
• Linz, Austria
• Tianjin, China
• Riva del Garda, Italy
• Isle of Wight, United Kingdom
• Brighton, United Kingdom
• Ródos, Greece
• Camden, ME, United States
• Osaka, Japan

While we can only speculate on why some of these cities are so popular this autumn, we’re pretty certain why Black Rock City’s at the top of the list.

This is of course because it is a city that only exists for a certain time, once a year for Burning Man. A temporary community that constructs itself, that gets mapped by that community, and now tops our social atlas of the Fall. Perfect!

Thanks to everyone who filled in our traveller survey recently. We were bowled-over by the responses, and fascinated by some of the trends we uncovered, for instance: when travellers tell Dopplr about their travel plans, two-thirds of them have not yet booked a hotel and half have not yet made any travel arrangements.

This is encouraging, as it shows that you’re really using Dopplr to optimise the future, and travel smarter - which is why we built it!

We got a lot of constructive criticism and suggestions also, of things that bug you, or things you’d like to see Dopplr provide - and we’re going to be writing a series of responses here on the blog over the autumn.

Many, many thanks to you all - one of the best things about helping build Dopplr is receiving feedback from passionate users. Remember we’ve got our Get Satisfaction Dopplr forum for you to contribute to also.

But, back to the autumn outlook.

As I said - the top destinations don’t change that much from season to season, as you might expect with the majority of our travel being for business; but we thought it might be revealing to segment the top destinations by continent.

Top ten destination cities for travellers from Europe
1. London, United Kingdom
2. Berlin, Germany
3. New York, NY, United States
4. Paris, France
5. Amsterdam, Netherlands
6. San Francisco, CA, United States
7. Munich, Germany
8. Brighton, United Kingdom
9. Barcelona, Spain
10. Stockholm, Sweden

Top ten destination cities for travellers from Asia
1. London, United Kingdom
2. Singapore, Singapore
3. Tokyo, Japan
4. Hong Kong, Hong Kong S.A.R., China
5. Beijing, China
6. New York, NY, United States
7. San Francisco, CA, United States
8. Paris, France
9. Bangkok, Thailand
10. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Top ten destination cities for travellers from North America
1. New York, NY, United States
2. San Francisco, CA, United States
3. London, United Kingdom
4. Chicago, IL, United States
5. Las Vegas, NV, United States
6. Los Angeles, CA, United States
7. Washington, DC, United States
8. Boston, MA, United States
9. Paris, France
10. Atlanta, GA, United States

Top ten destination cities for travellers from Africa:
1. London, United Kingdom
2. New York, NY, United States:
3. Amsterdam, Netherlands
4. Geneva, Switzerland
5. Dubai, United Arab Emirates
6. Lisbon, Portugal
7. Paris, France
8. Cape Town, South Africa
9. Boston, MA, United States
10. Nairobi, Kenya

Top ten destination cities for travellers from South America
1. Buenos Aires, Argentina
2. Sao Paulo, Brazil
3. New York, NY, United States
4. Santiago, Chile
5. London, United Kingdom
6. Paris, France
7. San Francisco, CA, United States
8. Madrid, Spain
9. Montevideo, Uruguay
10. Miami, FL, United States

Top ten destination cities for travellers from Oceania
1. London, United Kingdom
2. Sydney, Australia
3. Melbourne, Australia
4. Singapore, Singapore
5. Perth, Australia
6. Brisbane, Australia
7. Auckland, New Zealand
8. San Francisco, CA, United States
9. Tokyo, Japan
10. New York, NY, United States

That wraps up this traveller outlook - wherever you’re headed this autumn, safe travels from all of The Dopplr Team.