Digital Nomads and Low-Density Destinations: Exploratory Evidence from the NomadVillage Pre-Registration Survey

Abstract

Low-density regions across Europe increasingly seek to attract remote workers as a response to depopulation, yet relatively little is known about what these prospective residents actually want or whether host territories are prepared to receive them. This article presents exploratory evidence from a voluntary pre-registration survey conducted by the NomadVillage platform, comprising 104 valid responses across three actor groups: 92 prospective remote workers, 9 housing providers and 3 municipalities. Treating the dataset as exploratory and self-selected rather than representative, the analysis uses simple descriptive statistics and thematic aggregation. Preliminary findings indicate a mid-career, remote-ready and near-term audience whose destination choices rest not on connectivity alone but on a bundle of housing, services, community, work infrastructure and quality-of-life factors. Interest in shared workspaces is broad, while housing-format preferences are heterogeneous. A minority of respondents spontaneously raised affordability and displacement concerns. Supply-side responses, though too few for inference, suggest early willingness oriented toward medium-length stays. Read against the literature on the spatial polarisation of remote work and on transnational gentrification, the article argues that these patterns point to territorial readiness, the compatibility between demand and local capacity, as a necessary intermediate step between attraction and sustainable local impact, and discusses implications for place-based policy.