- 2 days ago
Category
🐳
AnimalsTranscript
00:00Get ready to not want to head into the office tomorrow as soon as you hear all about Time's World's
00:05Greatest Places list for 2026.
00:07There are brand new remote resorts, upgraded museums, old school favorite destinations, so much.
00:13And to break it all down, now we are joined by Emma Barker Bonomo here with us, Senior Editorial Director
00:19at Time.
00:19Thank you so much for being here.
00:21Thank you for having me.
00:23Yeah, of course. There's so much to get to here.
00:25But first, the question at the top of my mind, and probably most of our viewers as well, is how
00:30did you select these 100 places?
00:32I know some are submitted, others an application process, but still, how do you narrow it down to only 100?
00:38Yeah, so as a global news publication, we have a really wide network of correspondents and editors around the world
00:48who normally cover the news in their particular regions of the world, but are experts in their areas.
00:54And they help us determine what are the most exciting new openings, the most exciting new offerings for tourists in
01:03the area, pretty much every continent, including Antarctica.
01:08That's amazing. I mean, the list is so wide reaching.
01:11First, let's talk about hotels. These make up almost about half of the list, more than 40 properties.
01:15So you have some like the Six Senses and the Maldives that have been there since 2011, and then some
01:20brand new ones, like the one and only's first property in the U.S., now in Montana.
01:24So tell us a little bit about why these ones are on the list and what you're most excited about
01:28here.
01:29Yeah, absolutely. There's a really wide range of reasons a place might be on the list, but ultimately, every place
01:35is on because this is the year to go.
01:37So whether that's because of a certain event that's taking place nearby or a new offering at the hotel, some
01:46of the hotels are new themselves.
01:48But in the case of the Six Senses and the Maldives, it's they have an incredibly impressive conservation effort at
01:57their property.
01:59And that a lot of that is monitoring the wildlife, monitoring the sea life there, and they have actual researchers
02:06working out of there and they got a lot of new equipment that visitors can actually participate in a lot
02:15of the research with with the researchers.
02:18So you're down there, you're helping to monitor the rays in the water and doing some really cool stuff that
02:27you can't really do at any other spot in the Maldives.
02:31That's so exciting to think about all of these fun things to add to all of our travel to-do
02:35lists. So I love that.
02:36In terms of museums, that's the next kind of biggest category. I think there are about 15 on the list.
02:41I've been to a few of them, like the new Grand Egyptian Museum, the Studio Museum that just got a
02:45facelift, and some of these other ones that are kind of getting a redo here.
02:50So tell us about why it was so important to include some of these older institutions that have either gotten
02:55completely redone or just gotten maybe a new section or something added to them.
02:59Yeah, I think museums are crucial.
03:01And I think it's, you know, they don't often get as much love on some of the travel sites, mainly
03:07because they're not, you know, kind of the places where you're dropping the most money.
03:13Some of them are free.
03:14But I think there's some really exciting things happening in museums right now, especially art museums.
03:19The Frick in New York is on the list that just went through a huge renovation and it's such a
03:25cool place.
03:26They opened an entire new floor of it, and there's just a lot of new things to experience.
03:32So if you've been to the Frick before, you haven't been to this Frick, and it's a really cool place
03:35to go.
03:36There's a lot of really exciting art openings, especially in Asia.
03:42There's some really cool things.
03:43And the Contemporary Art Museum in Uzbekistan in Tashkent on the list is one of the coolest art openings of
03:53the year.
03:55And I think it's an area that you wouldn't necessarily think to go for Contemporary Art.
04:01Yeah, that's incredible to kind of highlight these places that you wouldn't necessarily think about, but really are having a
04:06moment now and hopefully bringing that into the future as well.
04:09So it's very exciting.
04:10When we move on to restaurants, probably my favorite topic, a lot of the ones you guys have included are
04:15a little bit off the beaten path, not on all the regular best restaurant lists.
04:19So tell us a little bit more about that selection process and why you chose these ones.
04:23Yeah, our benchmark for restaurants is really that it's an experience.
04:28We're not necessarily, we're not a food publication.
04:31We're not looking at what's the best meal, although these are all incredible meals.
04:35But we're really looking for something that's immersive, something that you're going to go out of your way to visit
04:40and not just eat at because you're in town.
04:43One of my favorites on the list is Savia in Mexico City.
04:48Just a really cool experience where it's a super small table, very few seats per night, but making that effort
04:57to get that reservation and go to Mexico City for it, I think is really going to pay off to
05:02a lot of people.
05:03That's so exciting.
05:04And now I want to make reservations at all of them.
05:06So I'm definitely one of those people.
05:08Tell us a little bit more about the travel trends taking shape for 2026 and how this year's Greatest Places
05:13reflects this kind of global shift in what's happening in tourism today.
05:18Yeah, it's a really big year for tourism.
05:21It's been continually climbing since tourism numbers have been continually climbing since the pandemic.
05:26And this year was no different.
05:28It continued to climb.
05:29But something that was really interesting is people are going a little further afield from a lot of the kind
05:35of go to European destinations that we typically see at the top.
05:40Bhutan saw really big numbers in terms of increases in visitors.
05:44And so I think there's some really interesting stories there.
05:50As we talked about, it's a really big year for art museums and art galleries.
05:55And that's a really big reason people are traveling now is these art openings and new exhibits.
06:01Another big year was in amusement parks, actually, kind of the opposite of museums.
06:07We have a handful of amusement parks on the list this year, which we usually only have maybe one or
06:13two.
06:14This year, we have the Six Flags in Saudi Arabia, which is the first Six Flags outside of the United
06:20States and also has the world's largest roller coaster.
06:25And we have the New York Universal Park in the United States.
06:31There's also some cool cruises that are kind of along the the entertainment timeline, which is the Disney Destiny Cruise.
06:41It's the first heroes and villains cruise that's existed.
06:45And I think that kind of thing is very popular.
06:48It's fun for people to go on a cruise with like the Marvel heroes and villains, which you are not
06:54used to seeing in like a cruise landscape.
06:57Yeah, it's definitely interesting to think about how all of these things are kind of integrated now into a cruise
07:02where I saw the Netflix houses on there as well.
07:05Again, taking people's favorite kind of things like that and translating them from media and entertainment into things they can
07:12actually go and do and interact with.
07:14So on that topic, tell me a little bit about some of your favorites in the U.S.
07:18because I know that Netflix one was big.
07:20What else is happening in the U.S. that you're really excited about?
07:23Yeah, so Netflix House is really interesting.
07:27It's really the brand's first foray into like a permanent space.
07:32Netflix, they've done a lot of kind of pop-up experiences around, especially like Stranger Things and some of their
07:39really popular shows.
07:41But in the past year, they opened two locations.
07:43Actually, we have the Philadelphia one on our list.
07:46And then they opened a location in Dallas.
07:48And it's really just like a wonderland for fans of Netflix shows.
07:54There's like, is it cake themed rooms and things to do and activities.
08:00And there's Stranger Things, there's Squid Game, there's everything.
08:04If you love a Netflix show, that's your sort of amusement park.
08:08And yes, it's entirely like a marketing ploy, but that doesn't make it any less fun for fans of the
08:14show.
08:15That's so true.
08:16That's such an important thing to remember.
08:18And when we look at all of the locations that are on the list, you have 100 on there.
08:22I think about half of them, actually more than half, are in the United States or Asia, but then the
08:26rest spread around the world.
08:28Was there any reason that it broke down this way with so many in the U.S. and Asia?
08:31Or is it kind of just what happened to come out of all of your research?
08:35That's sort of what happened to come out.
08:37I mean, the U.S. is a huge country.
08:38And there's such varied offerings across the country that there's always a lot of tourism here.
08:45Yeah.
08:46It was a really big year for Asia.
08:47I would say usually Europe is kind of the second most tourism going into this list.
08:55And Asia really overtook that this year.
08:58Asia just had a ton of offerings, Japan especially.
09:02Japanese tourism is really big right now.
09:04So a lot of people going to Thailand, Thailand's kind of the place to be.
09:09And we had spots in Sri Lanka, in Indonesia that are really cool.
09:14And a lot of people are kind of heading that direction this year.
09:19Yeah, it's interesting to think about that travel trend of a lot of people heading to Asia at the same
09:23time that a lot of these countries in Asia are also upping their game when it comes to some of
09:26these museums and other experiences that they're offering.
09:29And they're trying to get places.
09:31They're trying to spread the tourists out, too.
09:32We featured Songtsam Lodge in Zhejiang, China, which is a very rural area of China.
09:41And the Songtsam Lodges, it's a small chain of these very luxurious lodges that are mostly in these rural areas
09:51of China and are trying to get tourists out of the big bustling cities,
09:56and especially young Chinese people out of the bustling cities and offer these kind of like lush country retreats in
10:03China, which is a really interesting trend, too.
10:07Yeah, it definitely is.
10:07It's also interesting to think about the domestic travel that happens in a lot of these countries and these new
10:12places being built for them as well,
10:14because a lot of times we just think about ourselves going to travel places.
10:17But there are obviously domestic tourists everywhere, so it's great to see that happening.
10:22When we think a little bit about the slow travel trend that seems to be on the rise quite a
10:28bit,
10:28you know, as we mentioned, I think there are seven cruises on the list, but I only saw two train
10:32trips.
10:33And it's interesting because I think a lot of trains are kind of coming online of interesting places around the
10:37world.
10:38So I wanted to see what you thought about that, if people are kind of preferring more boat travel to
10:42train travel these days,
10:43or any trends with that slow travel that you might have noticed.
10:47Yeah. I mean, because this is an annual list, we're really looking at like kind of what's booming this year.
10:53And we did a lot of coverage of some new train routes last year.
10:58There was a really exciting one in Europe and on the Belmond in Europe.
11:07And there was a really great one through rural Australia that was really exciting as well.
11:14But this year, I think, was really about the river cruise.
11:17We're seeing a lot more of these small kind of sailboats, yachts, these smaller boats,
11:24where you're either booking out the entire thing, or it's maybe a couple of small parties,
11:30like less than 20 people on these boats.
11:33And it's like a smaller, more intimate experience.
11:36They make more stops.
11:37And it's a little less of a mega ship like the MS SeaWorld America, which is also on the list.
11:45But that's really the iconic cruise where it's like a small city on the ocean.
11:51But we're seeing a lot of these kind of smaller, more intimate cruising experiences really becoming super popular this year.
Comments