On this episode of Unpacked by Afar, host Aislyn Greene chats with four Afar editors about how they narrowed down 100 pages of pitches to choose the 25 best destinations to visit in 2025.
They discuss how the list addresses overtourism, the places they are most excited to visit, and what you need to know to travel with ease in 2025.
Transcript
Aislyn Greene: I’m Aislyn Greene and this is Unpacked, the podcast that unpacks one tricky topic in travel each week. And this week, it’s time to talk about Afar’s annual Where to Go list, where we share our top picks for where to go in the coming year. Several Afar editors worked together to create this list of 25 destinations, and today we’re going to be hearing from them.
They share the theme for this year’s list, which supports Afar’s mission to make travel a force for good. And they share how they selected the places on this list, the ones they can’t wait to visit, and what you need to know to plan an epic year of travel.
Everyone, welcome to Unpacked. Welcome back to the round table. Will you first go around and introduce yourself and say what it is that you do here at Afar?
Tim Chester: I’m Tim Chester, deputy editor, based in the Los Angeles area. I’m primarily responsible for destination inspiration, stories that inspire readers to travel. Some of my areas of interest include family travel, sustainable travel, arts and culture, and outdoor adventure.
Michelle Baran: I’m Michelle Baran. I am a deputy editor at Afar, and I oversee our news and cruise coverage. So I’m the one handling all of our breaking news, intel stories, and all things regarding travel news.
Sarika Bansal: Hi, I’m Sarika Bansal. I am Afar’s editorial director. I look after print as well as just broader strategy for our editorial team. I’m very interested in sustainable travel, in thinking about how to just bring cultural immersion into travel, and I am very excited about the Where to Go list.
Billie Cohen: I’m Billie Cohen. I’m Afar’s executive editor. In terms of the kind of travel that I like to write about and cover, mostly nerd travel is what I usually call it. But I work on print and digital and love all this inspirational stuff. Super excited about this year’s list.
Aislyn: You all mentioned how much you love the list and you’re in the middle of actually putting this list together right now, which is a huge undertaking.
Can you walk us through how you winnow the world down to 20-something destinations?
Tim: Sure. Um, I can take this. This is a, it’s a long, very fun process that kind of starts in late spring, early summer. We start to reach out to all our contributors around the world and find where they’re excited about: where they are, where they’ve been, where they’re going to.
And traditionally we get all kinds of pitches in. We put them into one huge Google doc that we like to get over a hundred pages before we start to read it. And then we kind of have a series of meetings to discuss all the picks. This year’s list was a bit different because we actually asked for contributions on a theme, the theme being undertourism and lesser-known places.
So we were very much avoiding the Paris and the Londons of the world and looking for places that readers might not know so much about.
Aislyn: How did you decide on that framing?
Sarika: I think that one of the main trends that we’ve been seeing in the world is just overtourism, post-COVID, that a lot of people are getting back out in the world, which is wonderful, but often going to the same destinations over and over again. I think, in part, that’s fueled by social media and, um, and people tending to pick places that they’ve seen on, you know, their friends’ feeds, and it’s a huge wide world out there.
I’ll just mention this one statistic that we’ve been using is that about 80 percent of travelers travel to the same 10 percent of destinations. So we were really interested in what does that other 90 percent look like? We know that that other 90 percent is filled with absolutely gorgeous, worthwhile places that will take people really much more deeply into certain parts of the world.
And so we were just excited to really focus on exploring that.
Aislyn: I’m curious too, how you define undertouristed? Like, where does a place go from being too touristed to not having enough? And is it because they don’t want them? How do you negotiate all of those complexities?
Michelle: This year, overtourism has reached, like, a fever pitch.
I mean, that’s obvious. We’re seeing tourists being sprayed with water guns in Barcelona, new regulations in Amsterdam and Japan. I think it’s become so apparent that, not just that it’s a problem, that it’s starting to have a very, like, unwelcoming vibe.
Like, clearly we’re congregating—too many of us are congregating in too few places and quite frankly, we need to spread out and seek quieter corners of the world that would actually benefit from tourism dollars rather than squeezing ourselves into destinations that are bursting at the seams.
And obviously, as travel editors, that’s where we can really help, right, in terms of guiding people to those hidden gems and letting them know where they are and how to get there and what they’ll find when they get there. So I do think that we can be part of the solution rather than contributing more to the problem, which ultimately is better for all parties involved, right? It’s better for the destinations. It’s better for the traveler. It’s better for all of us.
Sarika: And also, Aislyn, to answer your question more specifically about like the definition of undertourism, we didn’t go to look at how many tourists each of the places that we chose on our . . . on this year’s list gets.
A lot of it is very relative. And, you know, when we think about under touristed, we also are thinking about how our audience is primarily American. And a lot of these places, they may be more touristed by South American or Asian or African tourists, but not so much necessarily by American tourists. Again, we didn’t look at numbers, but it was more of a, a bit of a gut feel.
I mean, as travel editors, we’re, we’re bombarded with pitches, with ideas of, you know, what’s hot in the world and where people are going right now. So I think when we saw ones that were like, huh, I haven’t really seen as much about this place, then that sort of piqued our interest in terms of forming this year’s list.
Billie: Yeah. I think both Michelle and Sarika hit on something. We’re in a pretty privileged and unique situation as travel editors, right? We hear from the communities and destinations that are developing their tourism infrastructure or their, their tourism-like requests, right? Like we get to pass that on to travelers.
So we’ll know, for example, whereas a regular traveler might not hear about it, that there’s a community in New Zealand that is working to, to promote their own cultural destination and how travelers can interact with that. We get to hear about even cities in, in the states that are developing in ways that are going to be of interest to travelers since we, we get that information and we get to—I hate to say gatekeeper, right? Because we’re doing the opposite, right?
Aislyn: Yeah, yeah opening the gates.
Billie: We have a lot of information because that’s just what we’re attuned to, and we have the opportunity to pass that on, and it just brings to light places that aren’t maybe talked about so much in the mainstream. So I don’t know. I think we take our responsibility as a conduit for that kind of information really seriously.
And we want to pass on the places where there’s community buy-in for tourism, where there’s welcoming, where there’s a real opportunity for what we often refer to as “Afarish” travel: this kind of conscientious connection with a place, having a positive interaction, positive support for a place.
And in this climate, like Michelle described, that’s even more important. So Sarika is generously calling it gut, a gut instinct. But I think it really comes from a lot of knowledge and conversations with people who are living and working in these places, travelers who’ve been to these places, reporters we have based in these places.
Tim: Yeah, and I think some of the people in the destinations that we’re covering that are, that are opening up to tourism have probably learned the lesson from overtourism and from other countries. A lot of these places, they’re building it up more thoughtfully and slowly. So we’re seeing a lot of that as well.
Aislyn: Before we go into kind of some of the more philosophical underpinnings, what are some of the destinations that really resonated with each of you? What are the ones that you can’t wait to go and visit?
Sarika: We have a lot of really interesting, like, tropical destinations that I think that for a lot of travelers, they have, when you hear tropical destination, you have like a very specific image in mind of like, you know, sitting at an all-inclusive resort with a piña colada in your hand or something with a palm tree. You can definitely do that at most of the places that we’re talking about, but it does feel a little bit different.
So, for example, one of the destinations that really has piqued my interest is Guyana, which is a small country at the northern tip of South America. And I think it’s one of those types of places that you don’t really hear that many people talking about. Another country that is super interesting is Palau in the South Pacific, which definitely has a lot of similar vibes as a Fiji or a Tahiti. But it doesn’t get nearly as much attention and has a lot of really interesting sustainability initiatives going on there.
And this area in Indonesia called Sumba, which Indonesia has so many islands and so many different places, but this one just seemed like a really interesting one.
So I’ll just leave it there on the tropical side.
Tim: On a less tropical note, I’ve been just reading a piece from the Danish Riviera, which really intrigues me. But it’s more like windswept beaches and historic hotels. And I think, actually, Michelle, this is an interesting one, because we were talking about this internally, this wasn’t actually a pitch.
It was an area that I think you went to Copenhagen and heard about. And we talked more about it. And we found a writer who knows the area. So it kind of worked the other way. But yeah, definitely would like to visit that.
Michelle: I think that brings up a really interesting point. I mean, I think for us as travel editors, the most exciting thing is places that we don’t know a lot about, right?
Like that we haven’t heard about, because we feel like we’ve heard about so many, but you know, we, and so. Honestly, when something comes up like Guyana, like the Danish Riviera, it’s like, I get so excited to hear about, read about, learn more about places that are very new to me. So I think there is a little bit of that maybe almost selfishness in it too, like, where do we want to go?
Where are we excited about?
Billie: And I also love places that are new to me, but also places that I’m sort of familiar with but now I learned something else. Like we have Columbus, Ohio, on our list and I can’t wait to go and it definitely speaks to the nerdiness of me because there’s a thriving literary scene there, there’s a new annual book festival they have, a lot of award-winning writers are from there.
It sounds like there’s a great bookstore that I want to visit there. So that’s really exciting. There’s a place in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, on our list, Lenox, which is, I had no idea, it’s like the epicenter of music in, in the Northeast.
And there’s this big recording studio center there that has seen a lot of huge names. You can go and then you can also mix that with an experience of sort of the rural Lancaster County. So I don’t know. I love when the list puts a new spin on a place or a region that I thought I knew in a different way.
Aislyn: Yeah.
Sarika: I will say one really funny thing that I did when we were kind of like whittling down between a few places is I just started going on Reddit threads about people who wanted to potentially move to certain destinations. And then they were asking people for advice of like what it’s like to, you know, should I live there?
Should I move there? And so it was just a way of getting like a more insider scoop of actually what is this place really like. Because sometimes what you hear in a press release only tells you a very small sliver of, of the story.
Aislyn: Sarika is deep in the Reddit threads.
Sarika: Oh yeah. I don’t even know what Google thinks of me at this point.
Aislyn: Well, Billie, you mentioned Slack earlier. And right before we hopped on this recording, we were having a bit of a Slack conversation about this idea of “travel dupes” or duplicates, you know, places that are over touristed. So we say, hey, if you like this place, go to this other destination. And I don’t think that’s a huge way that we think about framing places, but is that in any way part of the list?
And if not, I would love to hear your thoughts in general on this idea of travel dupes, because it could very easily flatten the secondary location, right? Like it’s only good because it’s like this other XYZ place?
Billie: I will mention that I really try not to use the word “dupes” because to me it has a fast fashion connotation of just like, you know, replicating some brand-name item in a cheaper form that’s, you know, manufactured more poorly. And that’s a really rough idea to bring to travel and to places that have real people living there and, you know, that have like complete histories of their own.
That being said, I do think that, Aislyn, the idea that you brought up about, you know, we do know that overtourism is a problem and we do know that a lot of people go places because they want their picture on like specific Santorini steps. But what are like the core elements of that holiday that people are really looking for? Beyond, you know, any specific photos they want to get necessarily. But like, what are the core elements that they’re looking for?
And there’s so many other places in the world that offer similar experiences, even if they don’t have like those exact same markers of where they are. So it’s like, how could we just try to think about the world a little bit more expansively that way? Which isn’t as, as quick as saying “travel dupes,” I will admit, but that’s how I think about it.
Aislyn: Much more respectable for sure. Much more respectable.
Billie: Michelle, I know you also have a lot of thoughts.
Michelle: Yeah. I mean, I have so many feelings about dupes. The concept sort of emerged during the pandemic when we couldn’t really move around very much throughout the world. And so internally and at other travel publications, we kind of came up with this idea of how can you, if you’re, you’re missing Europe, you know, are there destinations in the U.S. that have like a European feel?
And at the time that felt kind of appropriate, like a way to have a connection to a destination that you were missing. And then I can also see it along the lines of this idea of like, you know, Netflix serving me up like if you like Emily in Paris, you know, you’ll also love this. But now, you know, the world is opened back up and I totally agree that it doesn’t do the “dupe,” the destination that’s being compared to, the, I don’t know what we want to call it, the prime destination, the Paris, the Rome, like, I feel like it doesn’t do it justice.
Our job as travel editors is to explain, market, sell the destination based on its attributes, based on what would draw people to it without having it be compared to this other place. So, I don’t know. Yeah, I feel like it’s lazy. Because it’s not, it’s not that place, you know, it’s its own place.
Aislyn: And we don’t want it to be.
Michelle: Yeah, we don’t want it to be. It’s its own thing. And so yeah, I also have this kind of reaction to the dupes concept that I don’t love it. I just don’t love it. Also because there’s nothing wrong with the original place. Like Paris is still great,you know, Rome is still great. Like, we don’t need a dupe.
You know, we’re trying to add more places to people’s awareness, not cancel the original destination, because those places are still wonderful. So.
Tim: Another way to look at it is, you know, what are you interested in? And here’s another place, here’s somewhere that has that. So British countryside, there’s the Cotswolds, but there’s also Oxfordshire. Greek Island, try Chios.
You want to go diving? South Africa’s wild coast. There aren’t, there are other places to do these things. I will say on the, on the overtourism thing, like you said, Michelle, these original places are worth visiting and there’s ways to do it right. And we have a whole series online about how to get off the tourist trail in places like the Caribbean, Croatia, Greece, but there are, you know, it can be done right.
It’s about visitor behavior as well as sheer numbers.
Aislyn: Absolutely.
Sarika: And even for these undertouristed places, the same thing applies, like, you could totally go to several of these places, stay in an international resort, and not do anything that actually contributes to the local economy or the local community.
And I think so much of what we’re trying to recommend through not just the places that are chosen, but the way that the pieces are written and the way they’re edited, is how to actually truly engage in those places, and really be there and see that there’s certain experiences that can only happen in certain places.
Aislyn: As you’re looking at this list and you’re editing these destinations, what things are you holding in your mind? Because there are a lot of complex factors to consider these days when we’re writing and editing specifically about travel. So what, what’s your mindset going into this?
Billie: I always feel an obligation to do justice to the places that we’re recommending.
As travel writers and editors, there’s always an element of, we’re outsiders. Right? And our job is to report in a place and open up that place and center it and give it a spotlight for a moment and how we do that matters. So I think all of us, we’re very conscientious about making sure that we have voices from the location in the story, combining that with our writers’ experiences there.
So they can be another lens through which the, the reader experiences the place and working with writers who have, have a lot of experience in these places as well. I think I feel fair saying that for all of us. We’re, we’re, we think about that a lot. You know, how do we support these places in the way that we talk about them?
You know, walk the walk in our writing and in our storytelling.
Tim: Yeah, and it’s an interesting discipline writing about places in just a couple of hundred words and trying to get to the essence of it and what makes it newsy now and excite people about it. And for example, um, Belgrade in Serbia, I could have written like 5,000 words about that, after just a weekend there and I had 250.
So it really sharpens your skills as a writer trying to put these together.
Sarika: Yeah, I will say that this is a really difficult assignment because you are, as Tim said, like boiling down the essence of the place. I find like the most successful pieces aren’t ones that necessarily give me a laundry list of restaurant recommendations or hotels to stay at or something because I have to first get bought in that I want to visit there.
So for me, the mark of a successful “where to go” piece is that at the end of it, I am like googling things on my own. Again, robots can’t pin me down. Um, I’m googling things on my own that I’m turning to my partner and saying like, “Hey, have you heard about this place? It sounds awesome.” And just that gut feeling of, like, I want to learn more is so much more powerful than, you know, you can give me six hotel recommendations, but that’s a later stage for me.
Like I think that this with a 250-word essay is just to really inspire people to just actually look up from whatever they’re reading and just really think about the world a little differently.
Billie: Yeah, well put. I mean our whole mission is like that you put down the magazine or your phone or whatever, and then go somewhere.
Sarika: Not too quick.
Billie: Right? We want you to stop reading and then go into the world.
Aislyn: Yeah. Chuck that magazine to the side. Well, it’s been a huge year or two in travel. It’s been a perhaps rocky year at times, so I’d love to get into the logistics of it all. So what do you predict 2025 is going to bring? Like what should travelers know as they start preparing for their year in travel?
Michelle: Well, this is where the, like, news skeptic, I don’t know, realist comes into play, like, you know, the list of where to go is for the dreamers. We, you know, we plant the seed, the dreams, and then I come in with the reality. No, I mean, um, I mean, no . . .
Aislyn: That’s true.
Michelle: … exactly. I’m a dream, but no, like, you have to. Yes, because you have to get there.
Right? You have to get there.
Aislyn: And hopefully happily.
Michelle: And getting there isn’t always easy. Let’s be real. Like air, air travel has been a nightmare coming out of the pandemic. The good news is, I’m not going to say the worst is behind us because every year we say that, and every year like new problems crop up. But I do think that many of the lingering problems that were created by the pandemic are starting to finally iron themselves out a bit.
I’m talking about air, meaning that in 2025, we should finally see airlines doing a bit better of a job managing their flight networks and successfully getting us to where we need to go. Also, the U.S. government has swooped in with some help and starting in October, they will be backing new regulations for proper compensation for flight delays and cancellations.
So, you know, things are getting better. The other thing to think about is 2025 is going to be the year of new travel documentation that is needed. So we’re going to need a Real ID starting in May to travel domestically in the United States. Europe and the U.K. both have new entry requirements coming into play in 2025, meaning that you’re going to have to register in advance before you go to the U.K. or to the European Schengen area.
All of which means it’s going to be a little messy because we all know that when new regulations go into play, a good chunk of people don’t know or forget, or they, the system doesn’t work, the website crashes, there’s long lines, because people aren’t doing it right. So, as always, as every year, pack your patience for 2025, because, well, a lot of things are getting better, there’s always room for more challenges to enter the picture, and 2025 is no exception. That’s my predictions from the Afar news desk.
Aislyn: That was a very optimistically realistic look ahead, Michelle.
Michelle: We’re here to help. We’re here to help, always. Afar is always here to hold your hand through all of it.
Sarika: I will say though for the list, for several of the locations that we talk about, we do have, like, tour operator recommendations, because some of them are a little bit harder to reach.
For example, the Karakoram mountains in Pakistan. I think that probably, like, you could potentially go there on your own, but it would be a lot easier to go with an operator who knows the area, who knows people, who knows trusted people to help guide you through that region. And I think that’s true with, like, a lot of these. Like alongside having an under-touristed list, it’s like how to actually make the trip happen.
And in a lot of cases, there are incredible tour operators in different parts of the world that can actually help that.
Aislyn: Well, I’d love to talk a little bit more about the philosophical side of this. You talked about this a little bit earlier, but how would you say this kind of under-touristed framing fits into Afar’s overall desire and goal to make travel a force for good?
Michelle: The one thing I think about a lot is, for example, when there’s a new travel warning that goes out for a destination and like, how do we handle destinations where there’s strife or it’s potentially dangerous? And one thing I always return to that feels like sort of the Afar ethos is we’re not really here to tell people that they should or should not go to a place because at the end of the day travel builds bridges.
People are always like, how do you handle destinations where we’re not sure if we should go? I think our job is to just help inform our readers about what’s going on, what’s the situation on the ground, what’s the local point of view, and have them make an informed decision about where to go. And I think that applies to under-touristed destinations.
I think it applies to destinations that are more up and coming or destinations that have had, like I said, some kind of political problems. You know, we’re not political. We’re just here to again, help build those bridges and sort of just let people know what is happening there.
Aislyn: Well said.
Sarika: Well said. I’ll add on to that to say that Afar, you know, I think that the Afar traveler isn’t just interested in how they can go to a destination and how it can benefit them, but also to think about, you know, really deeply engaging with the world and, you know, thinking about the effects on the planet that they have when they travel places and the effects on the communities that they visit.
Going to a less-touristed place, you’re able to actually just make a stronger difference by showing up and by being there, by spending money and engaging with local businesses. I think that that can have a huge impact on those places. And so that’s what we’re hoping to also do through this list.
Tim: Yeah, the pieces have recommendations for locally owned businesses, we’ve got options for staying longer, making your trip longer and making more of the visit, that sort of thing.
Aislyn: As I was putting together a list of questions for this episode, one thing that struck me is this idea that these “where to go” lists have endured, that they’re still a thing that people love. What do you think the value of them is in today’s society?
Billie: For a lot of the reasons we’ve discussed, right? Like, the world is big, and there are so many wonderful places to see.
And having some of that winnowed down for you in an interesting and engaging way, it’s just, like, really fun to flip through or scroll through. I think it just really speaks to people’s wanderlust. And even though the revenge travel era post pandemic is waning, I mean, people still love to travel or dream about travel or think about travel they just took.
So at any one point, someone is always in some part of the travel journey, right? Even if it’s just dreaming. So I don’t know that that’s, to me, that I still think they’re so fun to look at. I make a big list every year of places I’m going to go. And I never hit all of them. It’s fun to dream. Is that a good answer?
It’s fun to dream.
Tim: Have you been places based on a list, reading a list?
Billie: Yes. Yes, I have.
Aislyn: Sometimes it’s like years later though. I think we’ve talked, maybe we talked about this last year, but sometimes it can take three, four, or five years, but it’s in your brain and you’re like someday I will go to that place, you know?
Sarika: Yeah, I feel like also in a world where information is endless and so easily attainable, I think that the value of curation and expertise is actually really important. And that’s what I hope we can offer. And especially I think with this year’s list, the fact that we have such a strong point of view and how we have curated this year’s list and how we’re thinking about it, I do hope that that sort of speaks to—it’s not just a randomly curated list based on, based on, you know, certain like visitor data or something like that.
But this took a lot of, like, heart and soul that went into actually creating this. And I hope that our readers are able to see that.
Tim: Definitely one that is less focused on new hotels, new openings, PR events, that kind of thing. There’s some of that there. There’s some newsy hooks, but it’s very much more where in the world to go now and what suits me and sort of that.
Michelle Baran: Also, I feel like one thing that no one talks about with lists is that everybody’s sort of looking for their fave . . . like, did one of my favorite places make the list? Like everyone has their place there, like that they’re rooting for. Like, I feel like one big reason I look at lists is to see if like my places made it. It’s like, when there’s something about like, you know, “the best bagels in the U.S.” It’s like, is my bagel place on there?
Aislyn: Yes. There you go. Well, and I mean, I know that the list is for travelers, but one thing that I think we’ve talked a lot about at Afar is also decentering the traveler and making it more about the destination in a lot of ways. And everything that you’re saying to me is what this list is about.
So thank you so much everyone for joining me today in the middle of actually making this list happen and putting it out into the world. I really appreciate your time and energy.
Tim Chester: Thanks for having me.
Billie: Thank you so much.
Michelle: This has been fun.
Sarika: I hope everyone has actually, you know, read the list and would love to know what you think about it.
Aislyn: And that was our mighty Where to Go team. As I mentioned, we’ve linked to the full list in the show notes as well as to each editor’s social media handles.
We’ve also shared planning resources if you want to go deeper into any of the topics we discussed in the episode. And finally, we’ve linked to Afar’s Instagram handle where you can see these incredible destinations come to life in a new way.
Next week, we’ll be back with tips on how to, well, tip no matter where you are in the world.
Elaine: I want to just take one quick step and share the origin of tipping. There’s an acronym and the acronym is “to improve prompt service.” And way back in the Victorian days, when folks were taking tea in gardens, the amount of time it took to take the tea from the house all the way through to the garden, the tea would eventually become lukewarm.
So what happened is people started to put these little tin pans, uh, with a sign on it “to improve prompt service” so that the folks who are carrying the water back and forth, they’d get there quickly. And so that practice became more and more popular and it has evolved into what we see as far as tipping is concerned today.
So if we look at the origin “to improved prompt service” that’s where I’m saying that stellar service is where it belongs.
Ready for more unpacking? Visit afar.com, and be sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter. The magazine is @afarmedia. If you enjoyed today’s exploration, I hope you’ll come back for more great stories. Subscribing makes this easy! You can find Unpacked on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. And be sure to rate and review the show. It helps other travelers find it. We also want to hear from you: Is there a travel dilemma, trend, or topic you’d like us to explore? Drop us a line at afar.com/feedback or email us at unpacked@afar.com.
This has been Unpacked, a production of AFAR Media. The podcast is produced by Aislyn Greene and Nikki Galteland. Music composition by Chris Colin.
And remember: The world is complicated. We’re here to help you unpack it.
