Are you ready to handicap the New York Times 52 List of Places to Go in 2025 with me?
Quick refresher.
In recent years, the list has transitioned from America defined by celebrity places and famous-name hotels to what in our time of climate change fosters place-fit lodgings and outdoor adventure that invite travel as part of the solution instead of ballooning the problem.
The list is “must” reading for everyone from sophisticated travelers to armchair amateurs.
Looking for clues?
Consider how the Times travel section has looked back at last year’s picks. This month, Travel Editor Amy Vershup updated picks from the 2024 list. Read the tea leaves.
Two choices supported Maui after its climate-forced firestorm of last year and Morocco for its decimating earthquake.
Does this tell us Asheville in the new year? The city doesn’t show up in lists of recent years. Its Radical Hotel stands out among a new crop of boutique
properties across North America and Europe. This comes at a time when the trade press tells us that one to three hotels open their doors around the world daily to claim their stake in the luxury/lifestyle category; that hotels rarely close, and that this “may be setting the stage for a spectacular crash that could reshape the entire industry.”
The Caribbean rated two picks: Dominica, described as “an untamed garden,” rugged, still with indigenous Caribs (Kalinago people) and black volcanic sand beaches, but with few direct flights from the U.S. Also Grenada, although one of the poorest in the Antilles with the highest unemployment, has new direct flights and thanks to its many endemic spice cultivars, open-air markets that billow air-bouquets everywhere people walk.
So, maybe frequently storm-battered Puerto Rico for ’25?
Canada’s northwest Yukon Territory showed how cold has become the new hot in vacationing, where Whitehorse in 2020 set a Guinness World Record for the largest frozen-hair competition.
Makes me think of Norway’s Hurtigruten, the expert for top-of-the-globe venturing, as a cruise pick.
Singapore, renowned for national integrity, took a bow. So, Finland, staunch alongside Russia, or one of the Baltics?
Baltimore shared in bows among mainland U.S. cities where there’s no gap between how it keeps rejuvenating its Inner Harbor for residents, and how it holds itself out for visitors. Might the ’25 comparable be either of two cities in Ohio? There’s Columbus on the Scioto River that may surprise you to learn is America’s 14th largest city with almost a million people and with its 2,000-year-old restored brick German Village. Also possible is Springfield, which took a black eye when J.D. Vance falsely accused law-
abiding Haitians of eating town dogs.
Clues from the travel trade
Consider the trade paper Travel Weekly’s parent company Northstar that at its Phocuswright subsidiary’s look-ahead at tourism in 2025 cited an annual report by the Transport & Environment advocacy group that 83% of global companies “don’t [take] their climate impact seriously,” and that 57% of American travelers want the money they spend to benefit the communities they visit. Vague to be sure but the question is what the Times might make of it.
Does this open the way for Door County, Michigan that National Geographic in 1969 described as “Cape Cod on an inland sea,” that in September ranked as a NY Times “36 Hours In” feature, but hasn’t yet been listed among its 52 Places?
Past-due pushback against the wellness/luxury connection
About the wellness bandwagon assiduously promoted by high-end hotels, does this open a look at the Holistic Holiday at Sea that celebrates its 20th-anniversary weeklong cruise next March? It’s chockful of presentations by MDs and other health professionals, all vegan dining, and always sells out at cabins and suites that range from $2,000 per person to $5,500.
Less expensive except for the airfare to get there would be any of a few lodgings in the town of Angra de Heroismo on the Azorean island of Terceira, a World Heritage site. Exceptionally fitted in, the Boutique Hotel Teatro has only 16 rooms but also offers a small gym, a spa, sauna and pool. Rates range from the low hundreds into the low thousands depending on season and your choice of where to rest your head (elegantly in any case).
Further from the field among places that champion community and support biodiversity, is tiny Folkston in southeast Georgia (population under 5,000), where an Alabama mining company threatens the adjacent Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, and where town boasts the exemplary local Folkston Inn. The Okefenokee is the largest remaining blackwater swamp in North America and is up for World Heritage designation.
And here’s a wild card
An absolutely stunning series of reports has unfolded in The New York Times in recent years. The series rolled out for me at a new level of awareness with 193 stories — they’re really synopses — that show the reality of climate change in every country in the world. You can follow some of this coverage by Googling here.
We also know that there are only three carbon negative countries in the world: Bhutan in the Himalayas, Panama, which has moved aggressively with purposeful policies, and Suriname on the Atlantic coast just east of Guyana and where it rains just about year-round, producing lush forest interspersed with Indigenous villages throughout the interior.
Notwithstanding that none of the three refers to climate change at its tourism website, and that Panama made the list in 2019. might Bhutan score this year — or Suriname for rain-seekers?
Welcome 2025 safely and let’s see how we measure up with the real 52 in ’25.
