Get Quartz in your inbox

Free daily briefing on global business news.

10 under-the-radar destinations worth visiting before everyone else does

From Montserrat's volcano-carved beaches to polar plunges off the Antarctic Peninsula, 10 places worth booking before the rest of the internet catches on

Nathan Dumlao / Unsplash

Every autumn, a wave of travel guides arrives promising to reveal the places worth booking a flight for next year. The sheer volume makes it hard to separate a fresh recommendation from recycled hype, and travelers who want to spend limited vacation days wisely need a filter they can trust. Choosing the wrong destination costs more than a disappointing photo backdrop. It costs money, planning time, and the one or two weeks off that most workers get each year: stakes that turn a casual scroll through headlines into a decision with real consequences attached.

Picking well has gotten harder as popular destinations buckle under their own popularity. Venice now charges day-trippers an entry fee during peak dates, Barcelona residents have sprayed cruise-ship tourists with water pistols in protest, and a growing list of cities cap visitor numbers during high season.

The backlash has pushed travelers to look past the postcard shots toward places that still feel undiscovered, where a hotel room doesn't require booking six months out and a hiking trail doesn't require a permit lottery. Finding those places without months of independent research remains the harder problem, one a single trusted list can solve in an afternoon.

Lonely Planet has spent months compiling exactly that kind of list for its Best in Travel 2027 guide, an annual project built from the field reporting of its global network of writers and editors, not from crowdsourced polls or paid placements. The 2027 edition profiles 50 destinations and experiences across six regions, chosen by staff members who have visited, worked in, or lived in the places they recommend.

The 10 destinations below, drawn from that larger list, span five continents and cover territory from an island still shaped by an active volcano to a peninsula where ice sets the only itinerary. None of the 10 requires a permit lottery or a six-month wait for a hotel room, and each one gives a traveler a reason to book before the rest of the internet catches on.

1. Montserrat hides a coast carved by an active volcano

David Stanley / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Montserrat's Soufrière Hills volcano, active since the mid-1990s, buried the island's former capital and reshaped its southern half into the black-sand beaches and emerald peaks that now draw travelers searching for an overlooked Caribbean escape. The eruption forced the abandonment of Plymouth, once the island's main city, and pushed most residents north, leaving a quieter, less-developed island in its wake. That history sets Montserrat apart from its Caribbean neighbors, where high-rise resorts and cruise ports dominate the coastline. Here, the volcano itself has become part of the draw instead of a deterrent, and the exclusion zone around it gives the island a sense of raw geological drama that few other beach destinations can match.

Snorkelers head to Woodlands Beach, where the volcanic terrain continues underwater in dark sand and rock formations unlike the coral-white sand found elsewhere in the region. The island's dining scene has picked up international recognition lately, a surprising development for a destination with a population counted in the thousands, not the millions. Restaurants built around fresh Caribbean seafood and locally grown produce give visitors a reason to stay past the beach and the volcano tour, and the compact size of the island means a rental car can cover most of it in a single day. Getting to Montserrat still requires a connecting flight or ferry through nearby Antigua, a detour that keeps the crowds thin.

Accommodation on the island stays limited to small guesthouses and independent inns instead of international resort chains, a scarcity that keeps nightly rates modest and keeps the island's population of day-trippers thin even during the Caribbean's busiest travel months.

Local dive operators run trips to the underwater volcanic terrain year-round, and several double as informal historians who narrate the 1997 eruption for visitors curious about the exclusion zone they can see from the water. The absence of a major airport also means Montserrat never developed the cruise-port infrastructure that reshaped so many of its Caribbean neighbors, leaving its harbor and coastline largely as they were before the volcano altered them.

The isolation that once threatened the island's future is now its clearest selling point. Montserrat has spent three decades rebuilding an identity around the very disaster that reshaped it, and the resulting mix of dramatic scenery, quiet beaches and a food scene punching above its size gives travelers something increasingly rare: a Caribbean island that still feels like a discovery, not a checklist stop.

2. Chengdu blends giant pandas with unhurried city life

Chengdu, the capital of China's Sichuan province, pairs a growing roster of Michelin-starred restaurants with some of the country's most accessible giant panda encounters, a combination that has turned the city into a rare case of a fast-growing metropolis known for slowing down. The city's panda breeding centers sit close enough to downtown for a half-day visit, letting travelers pair a morning with the animals against an afternoon in the teahouses and parks where locals spend entire days playing cards and sipping tea. That rhythm, unhurried even as the surrounding city modernizes rapidly, gives Chengdu a personality distinct from the business-district intensity found in Shanghai or Beijing.

Sichuan cuisine anchors much of the appeal, with the region's signature use of Sichuan peppercorns producing a numbing heat found almost nowhere else in Chinese cooking. Kuanzhai Alley preserves a stretch of the city's older architecture alongside newer shops and restaurants, giving visitors a walkable introduction to how Chengdu blends its past with its present.

The city has also built a reputation as a center for Sichuan opera and as the birthplace of the ancient Shu kingdom, whose relics still surface in local museums and archaeological sites. Beyond the food and history, Chengdu has become known as one of China's leading hubs for its queer community and hip-hop scene, an identity that surprises visitors who expect only pandas and spice.

Chengdu's transit system now connects most of these attractions directly, letting visitors move between a panda base, a teahouse and a Michelin-recommended restaurant within a single afternoon without a........

© Quartz