The eastern European region named the world’s most underrated travel destination for 2027

Mention Romania to most travellers and they’ll picture gothic castles and a certain count with a taste for blood. Head northeast over the Eastern Carpathians, though, and you’ll find a much quieter region with the same wild mountains and a lot fewer coaches. That region is Bucovina, and it has just topped Time Out’s newly updated list of the world’s most underrated travel destinations for 2027.

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With overtourism nudging more of us to look beyond the usual hotspots, the list rounds up 41 quieter, cheaper alternatives to the classics. Every single spot has been visited by a Time Out editor or one of our globetrotting travel writers, and plenty of them are keen to welcome more visitors.

So what makes Bucovina so special? It’s a deeply traditional region of ancient forests, wildflower meadows and tiny mountain towns, and it’s home to eight UNESCO-listed painted monasteries, churches covered in colourful frescoes of Bible scenes and Romanian folk tales. It’s also where the Via Transilvanica begins, Romania’s 1,400km pilgrimage route that cuts diagonally across the country, passing through around 400 communities and taking roughly two months to walk in full.

Time Out’s travel editor Grace Beard hiked part of the trail and found village homestays serving homemade lunches, plenty of shots of sour cherry liqueur and a very warm welcome at every stop. ‘The Via Transilvanica is, technically, the largest open-air sculpture park in the world,’ says Iulian Gabor, one of the trail’s founders, referring to the individually carved stone waymarkers that guide hikers along the route. Bucovina is also the heartland of Romanian egg decorating, and the National Museum of Painted Eggs in Ciocănești has hundreds of examples.

Second place goes to South Dakota, which has some equally dramatic national parks without the crowds of Yosemite or Yellowstone. There’s the Badlands, where bison roam freely among striped rock formations that change colour through the day, and Custer State Park, home to the country’s second-largest bison herd and the hairpin-filled 14-mile Needles Highway. Mount Rushmore is here too, along with the still unfinished Crazy Horse Memorial. Time your trip for September and you can catch the annual Buffalo Roundup, when 60 cowboys and cowgirls gather up Custer’s 1,600 bison for health checks.

In third place are the Asturian cities in northern Spain. The region’s beaches and mountains are hardly a secret, but its cities tend to get overlooked. As Time Out’s UK news and features editor Ed Cunningham writes, Oviedo is leafy and ancient, with more than 100 sculptures dotted across town; Gijón is the region’s biggest and coolest city with a winding old town and a huge beach; and Avilés has medieval character and the striking Centro Niemeyer cultural centre. Expect plenty of seafood, and plenty of sidra, the local cider traditionally poured from head height.

Fourth and fifth place both head to Latin America. The Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica packs more than two percent of the planet’s biodiversity into one remote corner, and getting there involves a tiny plane, a sturdy 4x4 and a boat ride through jungle wetlands. In Peru, San Martín is a lush, quiet slice of the Upper Peruvian Amazon cloud forest, with hummingbirds, sloths and waterfalls like Salto de la Bruja, or ‘Witch’s Leap’, where local families go to swim. For somewhere to stay, Bosque Guardian Lodge sits in the Cordillera Escalera conservation area and swaps windows for mosquito nets.

The 10 most underrated travel destinations for 2027

1. Bucovina, Romania
2. South Dakota, US
3. Asturian cities, Spain
4. Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica
5. San Martín, Peru
6. Zambujeira do Mar, Portugal
7. Bisbee, Arizona
8. Shenzhen, China
9. Carry-le-Rouet, France
10. Tioga Pass, California
    
    

Read the full list of the 41 most underrated travel destinations to visit in 2027.

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