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

This year, we’re expected to spend more money on traveling than we ever have before. By the end of 2024, the World Travel and Tourism Council predicts that travelers across the planet will contribute a collective USD$11.1 trillion to the global GDP.

Interestingly, however, we don’t seem to be spreading out that wealth as well as we could be. Year after year, the vast majority of travel is concentrated in just a few markets, including France, Spain, Mexico, Italy, and Greece. 

In response, Intrepid Travel—which powers Adventure.com—has published its 2025 Not Hot List to highlight 10 underrated destinations truly ripe for adventure. These destinations aren’t places to avoid. Rather, they’re places with no shortage of opportunity for transformational travel. They just haven’t yet had their moment in the spotlight yet. 

In other words, if you’re looking to adventure in a place where you’re not likely to run into hordes of your fellow compatriots, run to the places on this list.

Intrepid released the list on Thursday in collaboration with Globetrender, which conducted extensive research about travel trends and produced a report about the “Not Hot” picks in collaboration with Intrepid. The goal of the list is to elevate destinations that have capacity, infrastructure, and desire to welcome more travelers, but which aren’t overrun with visitors.

“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.

“You can be intrepid without having to travel that far,” says Southan. “For a lot of people who live in Europe, going to Oslo might still feel like a place they hadn’t considered before. We wanted to make that point, and to provide a bit of recognition to Visit Oslo, which did something really innovative with the summer campaign that they launched. It was very funny and it had a really nice, humble tone to it that really resonated with our British sense of humor.”

The campaign, if you haven’t seen it, is well worth a watch. The video features a bored Oslo resident who claims that the city is way too chill and easy to get around. “Is it even a city?” he deadpans. This struck a chord with travelers seeking an antidote to over-trafficked destinations in Europe, such as Barcelona, where residents protested this summer by squirting tourists with water guns to make it clear they were not welcome en masse.

The full Not Hot List is as follows, and you can read the full report—complete with photographic inspiration—here:

1. Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan  
2. (Qeqertarsuaq) Disko Island, Greenland  
3. Cape York, Australia  
4. Adirondacks, New York 
5. Sainshand, Mongolia  
6. Rupununi Savanna, Guayana 
7. Anti-Atlas Mountains, Morocco  
8. Accra, Ghana 
9. Maldonado, Uruguay  
10. Oslo, Norway 

So, who’s ready for some underrated adventure?