Fancy planning a year ahead? Lonely Planet has released its Best in Travel 2027 selection, splitting 50 picks evenly between destinations worth the trip and experiences worth booking. It's the 51st edition from the guide publisher, pulling together recommendations from its writers and experts worldwide.
Europe claims ten of the fifty entries, and the suggestions push well beyond the usual hotspots. In Italy's Veneto region, the guide urges travellers to look past Venice towards the Dolomites, Lake Garda, Verona and Padua. Germany's Dessau makes the cut as the birthplace of the Bauhaus, while Croatia's Šibenik is pitched as a crowd-free Adriatic alternative. León in northern Spain offers a base on the Camino de Santiago, and Skanör-Falsterbo — nicknamed the Swedish Riviera — pairs quiet streets with traditional seaside cottages.
The long-haul picks are equally varied: Australia's Red Centre, the salt flats of Gujarat, Canada's Québec and Prince Edward Island, Morocco's capital Rabat, Oman, Kenya's Tsavo national parks, and Astana, Kazakhstan's futuristic capital on the steppe. Coasts dominate the destinations list — ten of the 25 — but the guide's editors want to widen what a beach holiday means. Montserrat offers black-sand beaches beneath the still-active Soufrière Hills volcano, while on the Maldivian island of Fulidhoo you can skip the private-island resort model entirely and stay in locally run guesthouses.
The other half of the list is all about what you do when you arrive. Suggestions range from driving France's Route Napoléon from the Côte d'Azur into the Alps, sailing Sicily's Aeolian Islands and diving in the Aegean, to riding India's Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, tracking orangutans by longboat in Malaysia, and eating your way around Taiwan. Quieter options include a night as a lighthouse keeper on Rose Island, Rhode Island, while the more daring end covers a polar plunge in Antarctica and meeting the chimpanzees of Tanzania's Gombe National Park.
According to editor Nectar Chambers, the point is breadth rather than a single trend: the list is designed to cover everything from a weekend city break to a once-in-a-lifetime expedition, letting travellers match the trip to what they actually want. For anyone overwhelmed by endless inspiration feeds, a curated 50 is a genuinely useful starting point — and the two-part format means you might pick a region first, then find a matching experience, or vice versa. Worth noting for planners: the list rewards shoulder-season thinking, with cold-water coasts and steppe capitals sitting alongside the tropical staples.
