The last time I went to Capri, close to season’s end, it was still more hellscape than holiday. I didn’t dare brave the Piazzetta when the sun was up, clogged with souvenir-snafflers on daytrips from the mainland; instead, I holed up at a beach club, leery of traipsing through the sardine-like bodies lined up on the pebbles just beyond its bounds. Still, the rates remain sky high: a five-star room could cost $4,000 a night in peak season, among the Med’s worst values-for-money. It’s always been busy, but the disparity between cost and experience is dramatically worse since the pandemic.
I asked a travel specialist about this once. Why she didn’t send clients to better, lesser-known islands in the Bay of Naples – Ischia, perhaps, with grand hotels, hot springs, and a largely Italian clientele, plus streets that might be near-deserted in mid-afternoon. “I’ve tried, but people just tell me: all my friends have been to Capri, and I want to go, too,” she shrugged.
And that’s the problem. Even seasoned travelers run the risk of playing it too safe, and advisors like these are too nervous to push back, treated less as a trusted counselor and more as a more biddable alternative to unleashing AI to book it all. So much of the conversation around over tourism leans into clichéd tropes, scolding that once-in-a-lifetime visitor for their temerity at wanting to see Venice. Instead, isn’t it up to those of us for whom travel is a constant to be brave enough to leave those over trafficked, under appealing destinations to those for whom they’re more dream-come-true?
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There are ample alternatives to every Dubrovnik, Santorini, or Barcelona, and the easiest way to find them is to look behind us, for a back-to-the-future approach to planning summer 2027.
In the 1960s, the first decade when new long-haul flights minted a globetrotting jet set, there were swathes of spots suffused with glamour that have somehow become lost to us. Pick up a copy of Holiday, the magazine which defined the era and its pages are filled with Slim Aarons-lensed spreads of the world’s most in-demand places. He spent the entire summer of 1954 trotting up and down Italy’s coastline from Positano to Amalfi, showcasing it internationally for the first time. But there are other places that were fixtures of the glitterati which I’d argue should be relished afresh rather than consigned to history.
The Capri-adjacent Ischia had a moment in the sun in that same era – Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were snapped kissing there on holiday – but it’s no longer quite such a headline-grabbing staple. But the hotels remain remarkable, and its assortment of hot springs are a delightful addition that Capri can’t match. If you’re craving that gilt-by-association of a trip to somewhere anointed by the 1960s, it’s more imaginative to look at the locations that have since lost their luster. Acapulco is another Taylor-endorsed destination; she married her third husband, Mike Todd, there in 1957. It’s slowly rebounding since the devastating Hurricane Otis in October 2023. There’s only a handful of high-end accommodations – but that might be the attraction.
Marbella in Spain, too: overdevelopment and rampant construction dashed its hopes of remaining at the five-star forefront, but the Marbella Club is still one of the best hotels in Europe. Then there’s Bermuda, which had up to six flights daily from New York as soon as the jet plane was in the air. It’s still gorgeous, just desperately in need of a new five-star hotel to lure back its upscale crowds. Charter a yacht, though, and it’s as glorious a getaway as ever – just without the crowds. Gstaad, where Slim Aarons captured lithe sixties socialites topping up their winter tans, is now a summer destination, too.
What about the Greek islands? Their popularity was not an accident, but a concerted government effort to siphon tourism there in the 1950s. The xenia program allotted prime land on each island to a modernist architect tasking them with building a luxury hotel to lure new visitors. The modish Mykonos Theoxenia is a renovation of one; Jackie O wouldn’t find it unfamiliar if she wandered poolside (and the Greek government has similar plans for several more). But you can avoid the hordes by staying at the new luxury hotel Odera on Tinos, the spiritual, artsy island where Greek artists have long flocked, or at the Rooster, which brought attention to Antiparos that locals perhaps grudgingly embraced.
So that’s the challenge I’d like to pose for those of us lucky enough to have the ability to go anywhere, as often as we wish: leave the over touristed destinations, be inspired by the past, and you’ll find plenty of places that are worth your time in the future. Just not Capri, in summer, please.
