Everyone's trying to find the Hot New Place – but sometimes they leave you cold

It’s that time of year again.

That time when publishers, tour agents, tour operators and hotel groups start throwing around predictions for the year ahead, telling everybody that some tiny island in the South Pacific/some city in China/some region you’ve never heard of is the Hot New Place. And you simply MUST visit!

As a travel editor, half my job is wading through the landfill to find the destinations and journeys that really sing. (The other half is actually travelling to them – sometimes.) I strongly believe that everywhere is worth going once, and you can find out so much more about a place by going there, talking to its residents and eating its food than you ever could hearing someone tell you about it. And wherever I go, I always read the local paper.

I’m often asked how I decide which cities, regions and countries to talk about in The Independent’s travel pages. The answer is complex: it’s based on hunches, anecdotal evidence, research. It’s based on the travel desk going out and speaking to travellers, residents, and – yes – marketing people about how they feel and where they want to go. And sometimes that Hot New Place leaves them all cold.

Case in point: this week, Lonely Planet listed Shenzhen, China’s “Silicon Valley”, as a top city to visit next year. Yes, it’s had a few high-profile museum openings and there are some nice parts. But after living for nearly four years across the border in Hong Kong, I couldn’t wholeheartedly tell a UK traveller to hang their annual holiday on just Shenzhen. For starters, Guangzhou up the road is far more interesting, and Hong Kong is as intoxicating a city as you’ll ever find. Why not combine all three?

I also know that people return again and again to the same destination because it’s where they feel most comfortable, it’s easy or it’s where they feel like a better version of themselves. I’ve been to Paris close to 50 times and love the woman I become when I sit outside a brasserie in the 11th arrondissement. New York makes me feel on edge and wide awake at the same time. When I walk through Shibuya in Tokyo, I feel as if I’ve plugged myself in to the city’s power supply. Plus, the food…

And so the travel desk put together our own predictions for 2019. Our selection isn’t random, nor based on spurious research: rather, it’s destinations that deserve to be better known. This is what makes travel such a brilliant section to edit. We have to look outward: we don’t have a choice. The world is a small place, and it’s a privilege to uncover (some of) it for you.

Yours,

Cathy Adams

Travel Editor