Forget ‘what’s hot’ and ‘where next?’ From Greenland to Ghana, check out the ‘Not Hot List’

“It’s no good just sending everyone off to this beautiful wilderness destination that then gets spoiled,” says Jenny Southan, editor, founder and CEO of Globetrender, the UK’s leading travel trend forecasting agency. “We tried to think about how we could do this responsibly.”

Number one on the list is Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan. This year, Pakistan has reduced barriers for entry by eliminating visa fees for international tourists from 126 countries, including the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Intrepid has also recently launched a new 15-day Pakistan Expedition trip which covers a lot of ground, historically and physically. Starting in the capital of Islamabad, travelers will experience the city of Lahore, the remote town of Shimsal, and hike high-altitude trails where they’ll sleep in guesthouses above 11,500 feet.

The Not Hot List spans the whole globe, and includes destinations such as the Anti-Atlas Mountains of Morocco, the Adirondack region of New York state, Accra, Ghana, and Oslo, Norway. To form the list, the team started with a list of destinations where Intrepid Travel will be expanding with new offerings in 2025. Globetrender then conducted independent research to find additional destinations with exciting news for travelers, such as Oslo’s clever summer tourism campaign selling the city by way of understatement.

“There had to be something, but that was quite tricky, because sometimes that ‘thing’ can make it a hot destination,” Southan told Adventure.com. “We wanted a topical thing that also didn’t make it too hot.”

Other destinations on the list include Greenland’s Qeqertarsuaq, also known as Disko Island, which will be more accessible than ever after a new international airport opens in Nuuk this November. 

One surprise on the list is Oslo. As a capital city, it may not immediately scream ‘off the beaten track.’ The Not Hot List team wanted to highlight a destination that’s relatively easy for Europeans to get to, and which may be overlooked by long-haul travelers who typically choose Stockholm, Copenhagen, or Iceland for their Scandinavian adventures. When they looked at the data, they found that Oslo is not as popular as other European cities, and, said Southan, they were also impressed by the city’s understated summer tourism campaign.