5 uncrowded destinations you must add to your travel bucket list this festive season

 Gujarat's Dhordo gets UNWTO 'best tourism village' honour; PM Modi responds

Take Alquézar, a village in Aragon, Spain, which won a spot on UNWTO's Best Tourism Villages list in 2022. Located nearly three hours’ drive northwest of Barcelona, this historic inland enclave sits at the foothills of the Sierra y Cañones de Guara Natural Park. Visitors can expect rugged mountain landscapes for hiking, caving and canyoning, as well as guided tours around the brick-walled town and through its narrow cobblestoned alleys.

“It was a village that was losing population, and tourism has allowed them not only to retain people but also to start seeing people interested in returning back to the village,” says Sandra Carvao, who helps develop rural tourism as the director of tourism competitiveness at UNWTO. (Carvao spoke with Bloomberg while the 2023 list was still under wraps.)

“It’s not about being the most beautiful in the world,” she says about the Best Tourism Villages winners in general. Each one must have “very interesting cultural and natural heritage,” she explains. And they must take that further. “It’s about what they do with it—how they protect it, how they’ve implemented social programs to have the community engaged, and how they are taking care of that community.”

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In Alquézar, the governing body created a free child-care space that also operates outside normal working hours, including on weekends, to accommodate tourism staff, such as restaurant servers, hotel receptionists, tour guides and others who face varying work schedules common in the travel industry. “At the end of the day, you’re allowing the sector to develop—and you're allowing someone to have a job, because you're supplying them with a support network,” explains Carvao.

In Angochagua, a town two hours’ drive north of Quito, at close to 10,000 feet of altitude in Ecuador’s Andean highlands, visitors find themselves immersed in day-to-day life with the Caranqui people. They can participate in cooking classes that highlight the tribe’s endemic grains and cereals, or try their hand at traditional embroidery practices and pottery making, among other activities.

Visiting these places doesn’t necessarily mean staying in local homes, either: Angochagua is home to the five-star Hacienda Zuleta, a working farm and estate with 19 rooms owned by the family of Galo Plaza Lasso, a deceased president of Ecuador.

Behind the scenes, the community runs reforestation programs that restock native plants, along with training for tourism entrepreneurs. It also has a team of community guards and park rangers who participate in a regionwide initiative to conserve the paramo, a high-altitude ecosystem of forests and grasslands unique to the Andes.

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Competition to earn a spot on UNWTO’s annual list of must-see tourism villages—which has been published since 2021—is fierce, given the way it propels destinations into the consciousness of international and domestic visitors. Carvao says previous winners have recorded noticeable gains in tourism after recognition; at least five have been incorporated into countrywide itineraries by such global tour operators as Intrepid Travel.

This year, more than 60 of 159 member countries in the organization submitted a record 260 nominations. These were vetted by an advisory board of 30 experts from a wide range of relevant professional backgrounds. Submissions were judged on nine criteria, including their natural and cultural resources and how the villages work to conserve them; the priority their leadership gives to tourism; whether they engage in sustainable practices; and their infrastructure development.

The 54 winners for 2023 range from a highland village in Indonesia to a mining town turned ski destination in Switzerland and an agricultural hamlet in China—along with communities of artisans and musicians in nearly every corner of the globe. Find them all here, and read on for five memorable rural escapes that are easily accessible from major cities.

Two hours north of Sapporo on Hokkaido, Biei draws visitors with its summertime scenery of purple lavender fields, as well as poppies, marigolds, sunflowers and others. Rent an electric bicycle or drive to take in the views, but proceed slowly: This village is for lazy meandering amid colorful scenery. Sample lavender-flavored ice cream at Farm Tomita, where you can hike around flower fields, tour a range of traditional houses with floral displays and sample locally crafted, lavender-based scents—all proof of the amplified role the blooms play in local life.

The village’s winning approach, which brings a consistent stream of tourists, is in sustainable farming techniques: Locals use a crop rotation system that preserves the area’s biodiversity and maintains soil fertility. A commitment to preserving popular geological features, such as the hot springs at Shirogane Onsen, are a bonus.

A 3.5-hour drive north from Lisbon takes you to this idyllic mountain town where colorful houses (and the balconied Casa de São Lourenço hotel) punctuate a boulder-filled landscape that’s carved with jaw-dropping hiking trails.

What distinguishes Manteigas from other Alpine-style paradises is the local government’s plan to augment the area’s wool-producing heritage. The blankets, shoes and throws you can buy here are made with a local technique that makes for ultrasoft, durable, waterproof wares; shop for them at the Burel wool factory or during the newly minted Land Wool Innovation Week, which brings together weavers, shepherds and designers each spring.

Most tourists leave Cusco directly after visiting Machu Picchu, but if you’re in Peru’s Sacred Valley area in July, a day trip two hours north will lead to the tiny Andean village of Paucartambo. There, you can participate in a kaleidoscopic festival celebrating la Virgen del Carmen, which in Spain concerns nautical matters but in Paucartambo conflates the Catholic Virgin with Pachamama, or Mother Earth.

More than a dozen folkloric groups don costumes and masks to parade down cobblestoned streets over the course of four days that usually begin on July 15.

Visiting Paucartambo also brings a chance to meet the Q’eros people, which some anthropologists consider direct descendants of the Inca; witness traditional hand-weaving practices they use to produce supersoft alpaca wool sweaters, shawls and ponchos.

Even if there were nothing around them, the extensive Tú Làn cave system would be worth the 1.5-hour flight from Hanoi: The largest such system in the world, it’s filled with towering calcite formations and otherworldly lakes that glow in neon colors. Aboveground are karst mountains and limestone cliffs—along with the village of Tân Hoá (population 3,000), where you can visit local homes for a farm-to-table dinner featuring dishes such as poi, a cassava flour-based rice dish with beans.

Oxalis Adventure, a community-owned and -operated outfitter, offers day trips as well as packaged multiday tours, including overnights at its new Tú Làn Lodge and contemporary mountain cabins that hover over the hills on stilts.

If you’re up for an epic, multiday road trip in Chile, the 1,500-mile drive from Santiago down Carretera Austral offers one of the country’s most scenic routes. On reaching the end of the road (after tacking on a short ferry ride), you’ll find the coastal fishing village of Caleta Tortel in the southernmost Aysén region of Chile’s Patagonia. (You can fly from Santiago to Balmaceda to shorten the drive.)

Once you reach the top of the village, you’ll explore only on foot: A stay at this car-free community involves walking miles of wooden boardwalks and staircases that hover over the Baker River beside colorful timber homes on stilts and tranquil water views.

Here, tourism is helping to preserve the way locals use woodworking to produce almost anything out of local timber. Meet local carpenters and watch them build wooden boats, then hop into one for a trip down the river. The village hosts an annual timber festival during the first week of February that celebrates its artisans with exhibits of their woodwork, barbecues and folkloric musical performances, all of which end in a community dance.