How we pick the top destinations at the travel desk

We’ve always favoured second cities and under-represented destinations around the world, and where your money can go further

Going Dutch: Rotterdam deserves more love as a tourist destination (istock)

This is the time of year where newspapers, book publishers and travel agencies start making predictions about where people will be going next year.

A quick flick through my inbox shows that the suggestions are as varied as Long Island, New York (100 years since the Roaring Twenties); Tokyo (the Olympics, obviously); Guernsey (it’s 75 years since the Channel Island was liberated); and Luxembourg, for no reason other than it’s enchanting and relatively under-visited for a European nation.

Last year, The Independent published its own Best in Travel for 2019. How right were we? On the list was Charleston, US; recently linked to London via a twice-weekly British Airways flight. We made the case for Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Plovdiv in Bulgaria, both second cities that deserved more tourists. We also predicted that responsible tourism would go mainstream: and in 2019 this one turned out to be the truest of them all.