Stargazing in the Chilean desert? Thrill seeking in the French Alps? Beach bathing on a Chinese island, anyone?
Booking.com recently parsed its 1,000 most-booked destinations of the last year to come up with a list of trending vacation spots for 2025 — and added some travel trend predictions too.
“The trends we see emerging for 2025 toss conventional travel aside,” Ben Harrell, Booking’s US managing director, told the media, “and make room for more non-traditional experiences that accept and embrace uncertainty.”
Some 27% of the Booking survey respondents now view airports as destinations of their own, not just travel hubs. (There’s a glass-half-full approach to the airline delays and cancellations that have plagued post-pandemic travel.)
Also trending are what Booking calls “boomer SKI trips” (45%) — that’s an acronym for “Spend the Kids’ Inheritance” on epic travel. (They might simply have called it “YOLO too!” — it’s less rage-baity, for one thing, plus the very next sentence in the report says that 77% to 81% of those boomers are bringing their kids and grandkids along for the ride.)
Travelers will be looking for ways to beat the heat (54%) in 2025, either via location — hello, northern Norway — or nocturnal recreation, including stargazing, aurora chasing and nightlife. And 67% plan to head for less crowded destinations in popular parts of the world.
Hence the list of trending destinations for 2025, which includes, for example, Sanya (No. 1) on China’s tropical Hainan Island and Tignes (No. 6) in the French Alps. Ticking multiple boxes — it’s less crowded, and it’s cool from both a climate and celestial perspective — is Tromsø (No. 4) in northern Norway, where historic wooden buildings line the waterfront, a sauna floats in the harbor and the Northern Lights woo Aurora Borealis seekers.
The resort city of Sanya sits on China’s tropical Hainan island. (Getty Images)
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Here’s the top 10. Find more details at Booking.com.
Top 10 trending destinations for 2025
1 Sanya, China
2 Trieste, Italy
3 João Pessoa, Brazil
4 Tromsø, Norway
5 Willemstad,Curaçao
6 Tignes, France
7 San Pedro de Atacama, Chile
8 Naha, Okinawa, Japan
9 Villajoyosa, Spain
10 Houston, Texas
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