Years of being pent up stateside (as exciting as the national parks and Hawaii are) have got Americans gagging for international adventures. Maybe it’s all that Emily in Paris, maybe it’s those royal goals in The Crown. However, according to a recent survey, neither France nor England are on the American wishlist in 2022.
Now, this could be for a couple of reasons: either travelers have already checked them off their bucket list (judging by our social media feeds, this could indeed be true), or none of the respondents had a Netflix subscription.
OK, it’s neither. Skyscanner, the company behind the survey, determined America’s most sought-after destinations by an increase in bookings since 2019 and the country who grabbed the number one spot is Qatar. The Middle East nation saw a 522 percent jump in bookings over the last three years, fueled no doubt by the pending 2022 World Cup (and sadly not a TV series starring a pretty actress with a fabulous wardrobe). This monster event will be the first time a World Cup has been held in the entire Middle East region.
Photograph: Shutterstock
The majority of the list, though, is made up of Caribbean islands. Anguilla, St Barths, Turks and Caicos, the US Virgin Islands, and Antigua and Barbuda all rank high for bucket-list travel this year, not doubt satisfying a truly American need for sun, sand and all-you-can-eat buffet resorts.
Rounding off the list are destinations we’ve seen trending before: the Maldives, the UAE, Portugal and Costa Rica.
Where do you think will top the list next year?
Skyscanner’s top trending bucket-list destinations for 2022:
- Qatar – 522% increase in bookings since 2019
- Anguilla – 420% increase in bookings since 2019
- Saint Barths – 345% increase in bookings since 2019
- Maldives – 138% increase in bookings since 2019
- Turks and Caicos Islands – 82% increase in bookings since 2019
- United Arab Emirates – 75% increase in bookings since 2019
- Portugal – 47% increase in bookings since 2019
- US Virgin Islands – 42% increase in bookings since 2019
- Costa Rica – 42% increase in bookings since 2019
- Antigua and Barbuda – 41% increase in bookings since 2019
