These are the fastest-growing tourist destinations for 2020, according to Airbnb
In a surprise result, the US city of Milwaukee has topped Airbnb’s list of 2020’s most up-and-coming tourist spots, according to the company’s booking data.
The list was compiled by comparing year-on-year growth in reservations, and has turned up a noteworthy number of lesser-known cities and regions, reflecting a broader trend for off-the-beaten-track travel.
The host of next year’s Democratic National Convention, Milwaukee is a rust belt relic-turned-centre of urban cool. The ultra-modern Milwaukee Art Museum was the intricate handiwork of renowned Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, and houses 25,000 works from across the world, while the Harley-Davidson Museum serves up curiosities of a very different variety.
It’s hard to believe that as recently as the mid-Nineties, Bilbao was a post-industrial heartland in decline, because the city has since blossomed like a butterfly from a cocoon. The Guggenheim Museum has been the main catalyst for change, opened in 1997 and designed by legendary architect Frank Gehry, and to this day it’s shimmering, undulating curves are still the city’s best known landmark.
Load any more tourists onto Bangkok and it would probably start sinking into the ground, so it’s up to the rural province of Buriram to make sure there’s enough Thailand to go around.
Though officially subsumed by the sprawling Melbourne suburbs, this breezy town still has its own distinct flavour, and its own appeal for tourists, both foreign and domestic. A hotspot for wine lovers, wildlife watchers, and Wisden readers, Sunbury’s greatest claim to fame comes via the Rupertswood Estate, apparently where the famous Ashes urn was presented for the first time to England cricket captain Ivo Bligh.
It’s hard to pinpoint one single reason why Romania is rocketing up the charts, because its forested hillsides, misty mountain villages, and Gothic castles have long been resoundingly underappreciated by travellers. Host to the real-life Transylvania, many tourists come in search of Dracula, and are rewarded with ghoulishly gruesome stories of the infamous (and very real) Vlad the Impaler.
The sprawling metropolis of Xi’an (in Chinese literally ‘Western Peace’), is pretty much synonymous with the 2,200-year-old army of terracotta soldiers discovered by two farmers in 1974. Magnificent though they are, the city boasts a host of other ancient treasures, from the monstrously large city walls to the delightfully-named Big Goose Pagoda.
Often called the birthplace of Chinese civilisation, and a longtime terminus for the silk road, today’s Xi’an is a cultural melting pot of a kind rarely seen in China. Swing by the Muslim quarter to see the splendour of the Great Mosque, and head out after dark for one of China’s finest night markets.
