Team Wanderlust | 26 December 2023
Our seasonal travel guide on where to go in 2024
With new events, trails, openings and anniversaries happening across 2024, here are our hot tips to add to your travel calendar...
With new events, trails, openings and anniversaries happening across 2024, here are our hot tips to add to your travel calendar...
So you've seen our Wanderlust Hot List, highlighting 24 of our favourite destinations to visit in 2024, but there are so many new events, trails, openings and anniversaries happening across the year that offer some irresistible reasons to travel. So we thought we'd organise them all into a useful season-by-season travel guide for you: check out our top travel tips for spring, summer, autumn and winter in 2024.
Morne Trois Pitons National Park, Dominica (Shutterstock)
The start of the year sees the launch of the world’s longest cable-car ride in Dominica, ferrying passengers 6.6km from the Roseau Valley up to the steaming waters of the Boiling Lake, a gigantic flooded fumarole in Morne Trois Pitons National Park. It’s a great intro to a nature-packed island with a hugely underrated wilderness.
In March, the Silk Road city of Khiva officially takes the title of ‘Tourist Capital of the Islamic World’ for 2024. It’s a great time to visit, not least because a new high-speed rail network is linking it up to the rest of Uzbekistan in 2024. Look out, too, for gourmet and dance festivals as the year goes on.
Read next: 18 extraordinary Silk Road experiences
Tbilisi (Shutterstock)
Spring is a fine time to reacquaint yourself with the eclectic architecture, historic wine culture and ornate bath houses of Tbilisi, as Georgian Airways restarts direct flights between London Gatwick and Georgia’s capital for the first time since the pandemic.
Grandmaster Palace, Valetta (Shutterstock)
The inaugural Malta Biennale welcomes contemporary art to Malta between March and May, with Valletta’s newly restored Grandmaster’s Palace (an exciting reopening in itself!) serving as the main venue. Exhibitions scatter historic sites all over the islands, offering plenty of reasons to explore.
Brno (Shutterstock)
In March, the Brno neighbourhood of Žlutý kopec allows visitors to wander its vast subterranean water tanks once more – brick reservoirs that are breathtaking in scale. Combine with a visit to the ossuary beneath St Jacob’s Square for the best of underground Brno.
Dark skies in Texas (Shutterstock)
The North American eclipse on 8 April is sparking celebrations across the continent, but one of the biggest (as things always are in Texas) is being held in Burnet, just outside Austin, where the four-day Texas Eclipse Festival (5–9 Apr) blends music, lectures, art and the big moment itself.
Lüneburg, Germany (Shutterstock)
The 300th birthday of German philosopher Immanuel Kant (22 April) is being marked not only with a big new show at Bonn’s Bundeskunsthalle (Kant: Unresolved Issues; until 17 Mar) looking at his contribution to the Enlightenment, but the planned 2024 opening of a new museum in Lüneburg dedicated to his life and work.
Derry~Londonderry's Bogside is known for its murals (Shutterstock)
The Bogside area of Derry-Londonderry sees the arrival of the new Peace Process Museum in late spring. This promises to be a fascinating addition to the city, as it grounds its history of the Troubles in the stories of local people.
There have been false starts before, but Cairo’s Grand Egyptian Museum – the largest museum in the world – looks set to finally open by mid-2024. The promise of seeing Tutankhamun’s entire treasure collection on display is perhaps the highlight of the summer.
Lemurs can be found in Madagascar (Shutterstock)
The mid-summer launch of the luxury Namoroka Tsingy Exploration Camp inside Namoroka National Park opens up a part of the island that is little visited. The nearest accommodation to this magnificent landscape of tsingy and lemurs was previously four hours’ drive away.
Read next: Best things to do in Madagascar
With new seasonal flights from London Gatwick beginning in May (until October), what better time to catch the province’s Iceberg Festival (June), which combines spotting giant ’bergs drifting down from the Arctic with whale watching, music, puffin tours, polar bear dips and more.
Japan’s newest long-distance walk, the 370km Hokkaido East Trail, is set to open this year, in time for a summer adventure. The route leads hikers through the national parks of Akan Mashu, Kushiro-Shitsugen and Shiretoko, across a wild region spanning marshlands, volcanoes and primeval forest. .
Arromanches-Les-Bain (Shutterstock)
The 80th anniversary of the D-Day Landings on 6 June makes visits to the coast where Allied troops stormed the beaches during the Second World War even more poignant in 2024. Be sure to drop by the seaside town of Arromanches-Les-Bain, whose D-Day museum was rebuilt only last year.
Lucca, Italy (Shutterstock)
The 100th anniversary of the death of Italian composer Giacomo Puccini is being marked by concerts across the world, from Abu Dhabi to Berlin. But this year’s edition of the Puccini Festival (Jul–Sep) in his hometown, Lucca, is perhaps the most special, with a series of his most famous operas being performed in the Gran Teatro open-air auditorium.
Get ready to hike the 39km Gidjuum Gulganyi Walk, a new sustainable trail launching this summer. It crosses the Tweed Byron hinterland between Jerusalem National Park and Minyon Falls, with walkers set to ford some of the last-remaining swathes of ancient Gondwana rainforest
Linz, Austria (Shutterstock)
The 200th anniversary of the birth of Austrian composer Anton Bruckner sees his hometown of Linz put on a series of performances throughout the year. But most eyes are on 2024’s edition of Brucknerfest (4–8 Sep), where all eleven of his symphonies are set be performed in one cycle for the first time.
Humpridge Track rises high over Fiordland National Park (Shutterstock)
The new 61km Tuatapere Hump Ridge Track, rising high over Fiordland National Park, is set to become New Zealand’s 11th Great Walk in October. Look out, too, for the Pounamu Pathway driving route between Haast and Westport, which is being linked by four new visitor centres charting Māori history. These have been designed by the Poutini Ngāi Tahu community together with the Wētā Workshop – the effects studio behind The Lord of the Rings!
Brisbane, Australia (Shutterstock)
As well as the much-anticipated redevelopment of Queen’s Wharf into a hot new shopping and dining area in April, the arrival this October of Melt OPEN, a new annual festival celebrating LGBTQ+ art and culture, is putting the city’s underrepresented voices in the limelight.
The November launch of Ama Waterways’ new cruise along the Magdalena lets you see the country from a river immortalised in the writings of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The route, between Cartagena and Barranquilla, takes in the Caribbean coast, colonial history and a stop among the stately plazas and flower-spilled balconies of the UNESCO-listed Mompox.
Gare du Nord, Paris (Shutterstock)
New European retro sleeper service Midnight Trains is due to start running at the end of 2024, with the first route likely to be between Paris and Venice. Its ‘hotels on wheels’ concept is attempting to recapture what made the golden age of rail so cherished. We see the appeal.
Cyclists, get ready! By the end of 2024, the new Trans-Dinarica cycling route will have opened across the Western Balkans. The route spans some 2,000km and eight countries, as you pedal the forests of Slovenia, cycle though the history and countryside of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, and skirt the coasts of Albania and Croatia. Expect incredible scenery without the crowds.
Having made its bid, we’ll know by the end of the year if Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge is the USA’s next UNESCO World Heritage site. Either way, it’s a fantastic gateway to nearly 200km of ’gator-filled prehistoric waterways and a land where ‘swamper’ settlers first arrived in the 19th century.
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