Hey, all—travel editor Nikki Ekstein here. It’s the most wonderful time of the year! And while, yes, I do love all the fa-la-la-la-la holiday merriment, ’tis the season known as Where to Go time here at Bloomberg Pursuits.

Every year we spend some 364 days obsessing over all the details that might comprise your next great vacation—striking new hotels, fascinating museum openings, delectable meals worth getting on a plane for. And then sometime in the middle of summer, we start taking stock of all that research to determine which destinations have the most buzz building for the year ahead. It’s not just a pile of big news we’re looking for: It’s surprise factor, star quality, something out-of-the-box and uniquely compelling. The types of things that’ll make you say: “Yes, please—when can we go?”

Now, several months of work later, we get to present our list: 25 exceptional destinations for 2025, each one sure to inspire in its own way. Think of it as the holiday present you can rely on—and one that keeps giving for the entire year ahead.

The Waldorf Astoria Seychelles Platte Island. Source: Waldorf Astoria Seychelles Platte Island

How does April in the Seychelles sound? You’ll get calm breezes at stellar new private island escapes—including one from LVMH’s Cheval Blanc—where the pearly shorelines are piled with funky granite boulders that look like beached whales. Or how about Skåne, Sweden in July? One of the world’s best chefs is opening a restaurant with hotel rooms there, though you may prefer to stay in a renovated baroque castle with candy-striped rooms instead. And I bet you’ve never thought about going to Algeria. Leisure travel visas are a relatively new opportunity there, which means you could be one of the lucky first few to see the hanging bridges of Constantine or the Saharan desert oasis of Taghit or the supersize (and impeccably preserved) Roman ruins at Cuicul.

A suspension bridge in Constantine, Algeria. Photographer: hocine haroun/iStockphoto

Am I three for three? There’s 22 more where that came from! And each destination is accompanied with insights about the best and worst times of year to visit, courtesy of our most plugged-in travel adviser friends who can help you book each trip.

Wherever you’re heading this holiday season, and whomever you’re spending it with, I hope it’s everything you wish for. And if you’re still undecided on the perfect holiday gift to stash in your suitcase, just print out a few Where to Go screen grabs and let your loved one pick an adventure for the year ahead. Experiences are more important than things anyway, right?

Connect with Nikki on Instagram.

Hands down my favorite thing about this year’s Where to Go list is the ridiculously nerdy price prediction tool we created—which wouldn’t have happened without Kayak’s help. To bring that tool to life, the company’s data scientists custom-pulled some 2.5 billion price insights. I first had the idea to do this crazy thing around June 2023, when Kayak released a new “Best Time to Travel” tool. I thought it was genius, and I wanted to integrate it into our annual list. Fast-forward … Now you can get personalized flight and hotel predictions for every month of the year, based on where you live. It’s extremely useful and really fun to play with, too.

After we got it all published, I called the company’s CEO, Steve Hafner, to make sure he knew his team was full of extremely lovely geniuses. And I picked his brain while I was at it, too. (How could I not?)

Here are three things he had to say about his outlook for 2025:

• There’s no best day to book airfare anymore. Booking on Tuesday “has been a myth for a really long time—at least a decade,” Hafner says. “Airlines started playing with predictive analysis [as a way to dynamically set airfare prices] around 2015,” which is when they started moving away from human-based revenue management departments. “But nowadays you have so much more demand for fewer seats in each type of cabin. As airlines put more seats in business and premium economy, there’s a lot less availability for those cheap seats. That means that the wide disparity among fares has kind of evaporated.” Set price alerts, he says, and book whenever you see a good price as long as it’s within six months of travel.

The exterior of Setsu Niseko.  Source: Ski.com

• There’s only one trending destination that’s getting cheaper to visit. “It’s rare to see search interest go up and airfare go down at the same time, but we’re seeing airfare declines of almost 20% from the US to Japan,” Hafner says, and that’s before you factor in the weak yen saving you money on the ground. “It’s not a secret anymore that Sapporo and Osaka are amazing cities, right? Especially if you like winter sports. Go on social media, which so many do for travel inspiration, and you’ll see great videos on TikTok of people skiing in some of the world's best snow,” he says. “I think if you asked 100 Americans anything about Japan 10 years ago, maybe one would be able to mention a city outside of Tokyo. That’s really changed.”
• The best hotel in the world is in France, but not Paris. “With five daughters and a wife, travel is never easy or cheap for me,” Hafner says, laughing. But if he could take a solo sabbatical anywhere in the world, it would be a return trip to his favorite hotel: the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Cap d’Antibes, in the south of France. “It’s just one of those places where you know people have been going for hundreds of years to have a good time, and you can just feel it. As soon as you step foot on the grounds, it’s just immaculate with a great view of the Mediterranean—and even the people who are working are smiling because they’re happy. It’s just a magical place.”

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Your Travel Questions, Answered

Can billionaires save the world? Or is it just a marketing gimmick?

The waters off Príncipe island. Photographer: Scott Ramsay www.LoveWildAfrica.

Well, @t.a.r.k.i.t., that’s a pretty deep question. Certainly they can finance a lot of smart solutions. And some are doing just that. Is Elon Musk going to save the world by sending “ordinary” humans on hyper-expensive space tourism missions that help them better appreciate our blue planet? I won’t bet on that.

But this week I wrote a story about South African billionaire Mark Shuttleworth, who helped create the operating system Ubuntu as CEO of software giant Canonical Inc., and his out-of-the-box ideas about conservation. On the tiny equatorial nation of São Tomé and Príncipe, he’s creating a “natural dividend” system that will pay all Príncipeans a set quarterly sum—which slides up or down based on how well they care for the ecosystem around them. It’s a model he likens in some ways to a universal basic income plan, and it helps create a meaningful culture of conservation in places where biodiverse ecosystems double as population centers, without buffers between them. Can it save the world? Probably not, but it very well may save some of our most naturally rich places.

What are the best honeymoon destinations in Africa and South America?

A rhino roams in the Okavango Delta, Botswana. Photographer: Barcroft Media/Barcroft Media

These two continents have a surprising amount in common, @isabellafgrande, with epic adventures and huge biodiversity. And interestingly enough, many of the most luxurious safari operators in Africa have their sights set on South America expansions. (Expect to hear more about that in 2025.)

For now, let me recommend my personal favorites: Explora’s lodge in the Sacred Valley, which is a cocoon of unplugged luxury (meaning, no Wi-Fi or TVs in the rooms) not far from Machu Picchu, and Vumbura Plains, with just a handful of ultraluxe “tents” with private plunge pools in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. You fall asleep there listening to hippos chortle and wake up to game drives or mokoro (canoe) excursions, with the most impressive wildlife sightings at every turn. (I’ll never forget the leopard we spotted with a fresh antelope kill, or the pack of super-rare painted dogs guarding a new litter of pups.) Both spots are spectacularly luxurious, will change your perspective of the world (no exaggeration) and offer a sumptuous place to rest and recharge in pure seclusion.

What are the best destinations for handcrafted goods?

RShop, HomeCurio. Source: R Finds

@jayfigemc2, I know we said you don’t have to travel the world to buy these artisan gifts, but if you want to travel to shop, especially for handcrafted goods, that gift guide linked right there offers some pretty fantastic inspiration. I’ve done some epic shopping in Peru, a destination this guide mentions, as well as South Africa (the woven baskets and painted pottery I bought there are focal points in my dining room). But my favorite place to shop for handcrafted goods, hands down, is Morocco. Rug shopping in Marrakech is such a ritual, conducted only after sitting down with the shopkeeper for sweet mint tea; usually they’ll teach you the Arabic words for “yes” (na’am) and “no” (la) so that you can convey your tastes as they dramatically unfurl option after option.

It’s not just rugs, either: Over about a half-dozen trips to the Red City I’ve brought back leather babouche slippers, hand-embossed ottomans, pottery, entire sets of blue-painted dinner plates and carved wood elephants for my global collection of pachyderms.

Pro tip: Pack a couple rolls of bubble wrap and a collapsible duffle. It’ll help you bring back delicate objects without scrambling for luggage space.