Anyone who has been reading destination news this year will remember the massive amounts of travelers flocking to popular destinations across the globe as travelers feel more confident in visiting to their favorite bucket-list places than they have for years.
But they’ll also remember how many of these destinations are saying enough, creating plans that will curb overtourism, or the unsustainable crowds that pollute and drain the destinations of what makes them so special.
So what’s the alternative?
Well, I personally think we as travelers are sleeping on a critically important type of destination that first ensures we’ll feel like we’re having that personal, life-changing travel experience we all crave, while also ensuring that we’re not being a part of the ever-growing overtourism problem.
The alternatives are small destinations — namely, small villages that are prepared to welcome tourists as a way of preserving their rural ways of life and offer unique attractions that travelers are unlikely to experience anywhere else.
Now, hear me out. They may not have museums that hold priceless world treasures like the Mona Lisa, but they’ve got something you can’t experience in a large, tourist-heavy city.
Take the UNWTO’s list of Best Tourism Villages. These are vetted villages and small towns across the globe that all offer ample opportunities for travelers to experience natural beauty in the form of hidden gems, sustainability, intangible cultural heritage, great food and safety.
Take Ordino, for example. It’s located in Andorra, the small country between Spain and France, and is a designated Biosphere Reserve that offers a year's worth of different seasonal adventure activities, from hiking to skiing and much more.
The village, located at 1,300 feet above sea level in the Pyrenees, has learned to integrate sustainable practices with its own culture and traditional livelihoods. Two of its annual festivals are recognized by UNESCO as a part of Intangible Cultural Heritage. It even launched an accessibility app, Parl’App, in 2020 to help travelers with functional disabilities visit and experience the best of Ordino.
These small villages offer some of the most unique travel experiences in the world, so my only question is this: why are we still sleeping on them?
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