Intrepid releases 2025 Not Hot List

September 2024

As overtourism reaches a tipping point, Intrepid's Not Hot List highlights 10 lesser-known destinations deserving of tourists' attention

Intepid has released its annual Not Hot List, featuring 10 lesser-known destinations that deserve the spotlight for travel in 2025. These destinations will be introducing new initiatives, developing new offerings and building more infrastructure to help support and promote tourism. Alongside the list, Intrepid is introducing 4 brand-new trips in Greenland, Ghana, Mongolia and Australia.  

Intrepid’s annual Not Hot List seeks to address overtourism by inspiring travellers to discover different and unique experiences around the world, with communities that can truly benefit from more visitors. The report is a collaborative effort by Intrepid’s global team and local operations experts in 27 cities worldwide, alongside travel trend agency Globetrender.  

The list includes alternative regions in popular countries like Morocco, where the Anti-Atlas Mountains are often missed by visitors, and emerging destinations like Pakistan and Greenland, where neighbouring countries have commanded most of the spotlight. 

The full list includes:  

1. Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan  

2. (Qeqertarsuaq) Disko Island, Greenland  

3. Cape York, Australia  

4. Adirondacks, New York 

5. Sainshand, Mongolia  

6. Rupununi Savannah, Guyana 

7. Anti-Atlas Mountains, Morocco  

8. Accra, Ghana 

9. Maldonado, Uruguay  

10. Oslo, Norway 

This year marks Intrepid’s most comprehensive Not Hot List to date, including third-party stats, trends and local insight in regions that are seeking to encourage travel in 2025. In contrast to tourist taxes, crowded viewpoints, and frustrated locals, travellers to these Not Hot List destinations can expect trips that forge meaningful connections far beyond the typical tourist experience. 

“Our annual Not Hot List strives to bring travellers off the tourist track and inspire them to consider lesser-known destinations, while helping to spread the benefits of tourism to places where it can have an outsized positive impact on communities and local economies,” says Erica Kritikides General Manager of Global Product for Intrepid Travel.

"We recognise the reality of overtourism in some destinations and continuously evolve our trips to help disperse travellers to new and exciting places and provide opportunities to travel at different times of the year.”  

“While promoting alternative destinations is a small part of the solution to overtourism, we remain committed to addressing the bigger issues through our product design. Our group size is very small (average of 10 travellers), we only employ local leaders and almost exclusively use locally owned accommodation and suppliers.” 

“Developing tourism in concert and consultation with host communities is the best way to combat the negative effects of overtourism,” Kritikides adds.  

To support the development of tourism in these destinations, Intrepid has launched brand-new trips in four of the Not Hot locations featured.

This includes, a 10-Day Intrepid Greenland Expedition, a land-based itinerary where travelers will experience Greenlandic culture and traverse the country’s diverse landscapes by foot; a 15-Day Benin, Togo and Ghana Adventure, taking travelers to rarely-visited spots like Teshie-Nungua in Ghana where skilled artisans craft elaborate art coffins symbolizing continued passion into the afterlife; an 11-Day Trans-Mongolian Railway Adventure, a train journey stopping at remote villages along the Gobi Desert; and an 11-Day Cape York & Torres Strait Explorer journey to the northernmost tip of Australia, where travelers can indulge in crayfish toasties with a Torres Strait Islander guide, and camp under the stars. These are all in addition to Intrepid’s 10-Day Pakistan trekking trip which first ran in 2024. 

To learn more about the 10 destinations, download Intrepid’s 2025 Not Hot List here.