The Best Vacation ideas - Part I

What are the best vacation ideas? According to US News and World Reports, these are the top 30 places to travel in 2019 and 2020:

The list - best vacation ideas

The best vacation ideas are shown below - the highest ranked destination is last.

• Amalfi Coast, Italy
• Costa Rica
• Great Barrier Reef
• Rio de Janeiro
• Prague
• St. Lucia
• Santoroni Greece
• British Virgin Islands
• Argentine Patagonia
• Banff, Alberta Canada
• Yellowstone national Park
• Florence Italy
• San Francisco
• Amsterdam
• The Maldives
• Sydney
• Machu Picchu, Peru
• Dubai
• New York City
• Barcelona Spain
• Yosemite National Park, California
• Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona
• Phuket, Thailand
• Bora Bora, French Polynesia
• Maui, Hawaii
• London
• Tahiti, French Polynesia
• Rome
• South Island, New Zealand
• Paris

US News says their methodology "takes into account expert analysis and user opinions, plus editor evaluations". Well one thing we know is that what's great for one person may be terrible for someone else. So there's a myth that there really are "best" places to visit. Still, the list is a nice departure point

Surprises

Some things that surprise me about the list:

• That the Galapagos did not make this list, yet Dubai is on the list.
• To see both Tahiti and Bora Bora on the list (personally I would have picked only Bora Bora)
• That many of the trending vacation spots are excluded as well like Iceland, Portugal, Ireland and Japan.
• An African Safari didn't make the list

Why are these surprises? These are what my clients tell me. No one knows the best vacation ideas as well as my clients and I.

Where do we go from here?

You can use this list for ideas for future vacations. Or you can use the list to reminiscence on many of the places. The list can even be used to generate more ideas - what's missing for example as we have done above.

Here's some other suggestions:

• Travel ideas
• Destination ideas
• Wish list destinatations

But where to go is only part of the story. You also need to think about how to travel. This is discussed in Part II.