In January 2005, The New York Times published the first version of its “Places to Go” list, with suggestions for dozens of voyages for people itching for new adventures.
The list that publishes next week will mark the 20th anniversary of the list (the index varied in length and name before, in 2014, settling in at “52 Places to Go,” in line with the weeks of the year). Over these last two decades, travel has been dramatically transformed. In 2023, there were 1.3 billion international arrivals worldwide, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization. That number in 2005: 806 million.
A traveler consulting our 2005 list had no smartphone, no Instagram, no Google Maps. Most of them saw the list in the printed paper. They may well have been carrying traveler’s checks (or, at the very least, currency). “Overtourism” and “sustainability” were not part of the conversation. Airbnb was not yet a company, let alone a verb.
What hasn’t changed? Each year, the central question is, Why now? Why should a destination be included this year? Is there an exciting event? A big anniversary? New infrastructure, new flights, a new atmosphere? Sometimes the absence of a destination like China, which last made the list in 2020, and Russia, which last appeared in 2019, is as telling as what’s made it on.
We have highlighted hotel and museum openings across Europe, in the Caribbean, in Asia and in Africa; rare natural occurrences like eclipses; and international gatherings like the Olympics. We have included places most of us couldn’t really get to, like “Space” in 2012. On occasion, a destination prompted debates among readers, like the 2017 inclusion of the South Bronx.
Predictions can go awry: In 2019, we chose Los Angeles, where the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures was supposed to make its debut. It ended up opening in 2021. In 2020, Egypt made the list because the Grand Egyptian Museum was about to open (it partly opened in October 2024). Sometimes the list is sadly accurate: In 2019, we included Hong Kong, noting that “dazzling new infrastructure makes travel easier but could threaten independence.” By the time Sebastian Modak, that year’s 52 Places Traveler, who was supposed to visit all the places on our list, made it there, the city was engulfed in protests, and today that independence has been sharply curtailed by Beijing.
In total, we’ve recommended 145 countries, from Albania to Zimbabwe. We do choose a No. 1 destination, but the others are not ranked. We’ve covered all seven continents, with Antarctica making it onto the 2010 and 2012 lists. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the United States has appeared the most: 155 times. Italy has appeared 29 times and France has been on 28 times. There are 52 countries we have never recommended. In 2021, “The World” made the list as people eagerly awaited vaccines and a resurgence of travel after the pandemic.
Countries have emerged from conflict as others were engulfed by it; places like New Orleans and Morocco have recovered from natural disasters; and a global pandemic that halted travel in its tracks has given way to a recovery that some called “revenge travel.”
Here, a look at the 20-year journey of the “Places to Go” list.
In 20 years we have recommended 914 total places, including 145 countries, 366 different cities and towns and 41 U.S. states.
The nine states that haven’t made the list (yet) are: Delaware, Iowa, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Vermont and West Virginia.
Pics or it didn’t happen
Apart from Facebook, which was created in 2004, the list is older than almost all of the social media platforms we use to dream of destinations and do research today: Twitter was created in 2006, Tumblr in 2007, Instagram in 2010 and TikTok in 2016.
Sri Lanka topped the list in 2010, a year that also saw two big changes. Facebook introduced Groups and Instagram was born. Groups let travelers share information and itineraries among themselves. Solo female travelers could gather to talk about where they felt safest; L.G.B.T.Q. travelers, Indigenous people and travelers of color could talk about which tour operators were most welcoming; travelers with disabilities could share tips on accessibility. Soon to come: blogs that shifted expertise away from the travel magazines and guidebooks (we first noted bloggers in Copenhagen in 2010).
Meanwhile, Instagram made it possible for people to share photos — and later videos — of their trips quickly and in the moment. Travel’s billion-dollar influencer economy followed closely behind. Viral TikTok dances at monuments around the world came later.
Katie Parla’s 2014 entry about Vatican City mentions Pope Francis’ 4.8 million followers on Twitter, and with the 2015 list we used Facebook to ask readers for their favorite destination tips. The following year, we suggested that readers “share your 2016 travel ideas on Instagram with #52places.”
The world in your hand
The iPhone, introduced in 2007, wasn’t the first smartphone, but it is, arguably, the one that’s changed travel the most.
Now, when we need tips on where to go, we turn to our phones. We book flights and trains, rent cars, make hotel and restaurant reservations. When we need directions, we look at the maps on our phones. We first mentioned the influence of smartphones on travel in 2013, when we wrote that New York State would be rolling out an app to help travelers navigate the Adirondacks.
What the phone did to maps, it is now doing to money. The rise of mobile payment apps (Apple Pay has been around since 2014) has made it almost unnecessary to carry currency in many places. Why visit the A.T.M. or convert dollars when you’ve got a digital wallet in your hand?
Booking a stranger’s spare room
It can be hard to remember the days when Airbnb wasn’t being blamed for accelerating gentrification everywhere from Mexico City to Barcelona. Beginning in 2008, it upended how we find a place for the night.
Vacation Rentals by Owner (later Vrbo) and Booking.com created an online market for short-term rentals, but Airbnb became the first platform to allow travelers to book a room in someone’s home and pay for it online, essentially elevating couchsurfing. In addition to often being cheaper than hotels, for many travelers, an added benefit was that it allowed them to see where their money was going.
In less than a year the idea had spread far enough that 2009’s entry for the Bahamas noted that short-term rentals would soon be available.
Now, many short-term rentals are owned and run by corporations who have never set foot on the property. And cleaning charges and other fees are a source of irritation. Still, Airbnb, Vrbo and others compete alongside hotels as primary lodging options for travelers and are billion-dollar companies.
2005
The Travel desk publishes its first list, with 38 recommendations for “Where to Go.”
2006
20 places are highlighted, including “the Stans,” New Orleans and Kabul, with “eco-tourism” the Buzzword of the Year.
2007
24 destinations; Iran makes its first appearance on the list, along with Yemen, Zambia and Southern Albania.
2008
The list becomes Places to Go, but with 53 entries. For the first time they are numbered, with Laos No. 1.
2009
There are 44 entries on the list, with 13 appearing only online. The list predicts that President Barack Obama will once again allow Americans to visit Cuba. That doesn’t happen until 2011.
2010
The list is cut to 31 Places. Breckenridge, Colo., makes the list for decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana.
2011
Back up to 41 Places, including Iraqi Kurdistan, though the item acknowledges that the U.S. State Department warns against visiting the country. With Salonika, Greece makes the list for the first time.
2012
Among the 45 places on 2012’s list: Space. “Pretty soon anyone with $200,000 will be able to travel” there, the list predicts, citing Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. Virgin’s first commercial flight to space actually takes off in 2023.
2013
There are 46 Places to Go. Ireland and New Zealand make the list for the first time. The online design includes photographs submitted by readers.
2014
The list settles in at 52 Places to Go, with a digital design that includes video for the first time. Northern lights tourism makes its debut on the list.
2015
The year offers a particularly wide-ranging list, with the first and only appearances from Denmark’s Faroe Islands, Papua New Guinea and Baku, Azerbaijan.
Fighting the crowds
The popular use of the word “overtourism” can be traced to a 2016 article about Iceland in Skift, a travel-industry publication. But it’s been a theme on the list since at least 2006, when we suggested Istria, in northern Croatia, as an alternative for “foodies weary of overpriced and overcrowded tables in Tuscany and Provence.”
Destinations that thought they wanted crowds (Amsterdam? Barcelona?) have faced an onslaught of boorish behavior, strained natural resources and concern about the environment, which has residents protesting and governments imposing restrictions on tourism in destinations in Spain, Hawaii, Japan and more.
The blame can be assigned broadly: destination marketers, budget airlines, short-term rentals, social media, looser visa requirements and rising incomes, all of which have driven traveler numbers above one billion.
Getting to a place before everybody else does is part of the appeal of a list like ours. In 2008, it was Laos, which waspraised in an item that began, “Vietnam and Cambodia are so 2007. Now, Laos is shaping up to be Indochina’s next hot spot.”
In 2022, our top choice, Chioggia, Italy, an alternative to Venice, was in line with the rising desire among travelers for “dupes” — places where travelers can have an experience similar to a more popular place, but without the crowds.
Greening and greenwashing?
From the start, the list was concerned about travelers’ environmental impact, with a focus on “green” stays and activities; in later years, that expanded to include making life sustainable for residents.
In 2005, we wrote about destinations that would “impress the environmentalist.” In 2009, we named Star Island in the Bahamas as the “eco-destination of the year” and highlighted plans to turn it into “the world’s first truly carbon-neutral resort island.”
Throughout the years we’ve talked about melting glaciers and animals at risk of extinction, and offered ways to travel more thoughtfully. Since 2020, sustainability has been a central theme in every list. The 2022 list — the first with recommendations on where to travel to be published in the wake of the pandemic — focused on places where travelers could help make a difference, including by cutting carbon. As we noted then, “the travel industry is responsible for somewhere between 8 and 11 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council.”
And in more recent years, the list has increasingly suggested supporting local communities by spending travel dollars on Indigenous-led tours, Black or women-owned restaurants and bars, or L.G.B.T.Q. events, a recognition too, that sustainability goes beyond just environmental concerns.
Comeback kids
Can travel be a force for good? Our list has suggested it can, singling out places that are on the path to recovery from natural or man-made disasters as well as political devastation, though in retrospect, in some cases there was wishful thinking involved. In 2006, Kabul was our “emerging destination of the year,” and in 2010, we suggested that Damascus might be “the next Marrakesh.” Myanmar made the list in both 2012 and 2013.
New Orleans has made the list three times, including in 2006, less than six months after it was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, when we anointed it “comeback of the year.” Similarly, in 2024 we advised readers to visit Morocco and Maui in the wake of the earthquake and wildfire they were hit by.
2016
Cesme, Turkey, and Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo both make the list for the second time. Marfa, Texas, is noted for its “funky and low-key vibe.”
2017
For the first time, the online presentation includes drone footage and 360-degree videos. Jamaica makes its first appearance. The South Bronx makes the list at No. 51, creating controversy among some readers.
2018
New Orleans comes in at No. 1 and Jada Yuan, the first 52 Places Traveler, makes it to every destination on the list in a yearlong sprint …
2019
… but Sebastian Modak, the second and last 52 Places Traveler, only gets to 51 of the year’s choices: By the time his journey starts, visiting Iran, the No. 45 choice, has become too risky.
2020
Worldwide travel shuts down after March 11, when the World Health Organization declares that Covid-19 is a global pandemic.
2021
With world travel essentially at a standstill, we ask readers for their favorite destinations and publish the list as “52 Places to Love.”
2022
The list is temporarily renamed “52 Places for a Changed World” and focuses on destinations where “travelers can be part of the solution.”
2023
International travel has rebounded, with 1.3 billion arrivals worldwide, 89 percent of prepandemic levels of 2019. The list returns to “Places to Go.”
2024
Reflecting political tensions, neither China, which last made the list in 2020, nor Russia, which last appeared in 2019, makes the list.
A year without travel
On Jan. 8, 2020, as that year’s list was published, a Times report out of China announced that researchers had identified “a new virus behind an illness that has infected dozens of people across Asia.” The article reported that the as-yet-unnamed coronavirus “doesn’t appear to be readily spread by humans, but researchers caution that more study is needed.”
That year, Washington topped the list in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which extended the right to vote to American women (though Black men and women’s actual ability to vote was curtailed for decades longer).
On March 11, the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic and travel came to an abrupt halt. “A Year Without Travel” had devastating financial effects in many places, and some positive environmental ones.
The pandemic forced those eager to move to travel locally, to embrace road trips and to look for adventure in less extravagant journeys and outdoors. The word “staycation” became popular.
With travel constrained, to put together the 2021 list, we asked readers about the places that “delighted, inspired and comforted them in a dark year.” We received more than 2,000 suggestions, including the Siwa Oasis in Egypt, Lake Michigan and Niansogoni in Burkina Faso. That year, we held publication of the list by a day because of the Jan. 6 riot in Washington.
Back with a vengeance
The absence of travel reminded people of what they were missing. Despite predictions that travel would rebound slowly, as vaccines became available, people got back on planes at historic levels.
This phenomenon, known as “revenge travel,” was seen across the globe as people went on big, bucket-list trips they’d saved up for over the previous two years. They also got into more altercations with flight crews and fellow passengers, often over the issue of wearing masks. The Federal Aviation Administration reported about 6,000 incidents of unruly passengers in 2021. By 2023, that number had dropped to 2,100, but remained higher than it was before the pandemic.
Our 2023 list went back into inspiration mode. Reflecting a newfound love of the outdoors, it went heavy on hiking-friendly destinations like Methana, Greece; Boquete, Panama; and Morioka, Japan.
In 2024, the Path of Totality for the year’s solar eclipse in North America took the No. 1 spot. The eclipse set off a frenzy among travelers, and even got people off their phones: In states that were in the path of totality, internet traffic dropped by 40 to 60 percent around the time of the eclipse, according to Cloudflare, a company that manages network services.