Petra, Jordan ranked top of Lonely Planet's Ultimate Travel List

LONDON/PRNewswire/ 

• UK scores 34 spots in top 500 best places in the world, securing more than any other country
• Lake District National Park named UK's top experience
• Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way highest new entry

Lonely Planet has ranked the top 500 unmissable global travel experiences helping to satisfy your wanderlust from the safety of an armchair.

According to leading global travel authority Lonely Planet's Ultimate Travel List released today, Petra in Jordan has been named as the number 1 place in the world to experience, outdoors adventure dominate the rankings and a total of 34 of the world's best travel experiences can be found in the UK, making it home to more of the planet's must-see places than anywhere else.

Lonely Planet's Ultimate Travel List is the 2^nd edition of the travel powerhouse's bestselling coffee table book.  It's the definitive wish-list of the 500 most thrilling, memorable and interesting travel experiences in the world – ranked in order of brilliance.

"We've all got a list of places that we want to see for ourselves: places friends have enthused about, places we've read about, dreamed about.  This is our list," says Lonely Planet.  

"And this second edition contains over 200 new entries," the publisher boasts, with the highest new entry Ireland's West Atlantic Way, in at No. 21. According to Lonely Planet the experiences and destinations are "a mix of knock-out new openings, sights that have upped their game, or places more relevant to the way we travel now."

"We also changed the way we calculated the list," says Lonely Planet's VP of Publishing Piers Pickard.  "For this edition we rewarded extra points to sights that are managing tourism sustainably."

The Top 10 travel experiences on Lonely Planet's Ultimate Travel List 2^nd ed are…

• Petra, Jordan – channel your inner adventurer and explore the enigmatic "lost city"
• The Galápagos Islands – see the islands that changed the course of science
• Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, Australia – take life lessons from the traditional owners of the world's most dramatic rock
• Okavango Delta, Botswana – experience slow travel on the sprawling flooded ecosystem
• Yellowstone National Park, USA – sniff out geysers and grizzlies in the world's largest geothermal area
• Lake Bled, Slovenia – emulate erstwhile pilgrims by journeying to the planet's most photogenic lake
• Iguazú Falls, Argentina-Brazil – marvel at the astounding power and furious force of this natural wonder
• Temples of Angkor, Cambodia – find Hindu heaven at the sprawling monument to devotion
• Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia – with clouds above and clouds below strike out on the salt of the earth
• Annapurna Circuit, Nepal – take the classic Nepalese teahouse trek

A showcase of the Top 10 destinations featured on the list can be viewed at lonelyplanet.com/landing/ultimate-travel-list

There's a decidedly alfresco flavour to Lonely Planet's list, with almost half of the dream recommendations outdoors or wildlife experiences, reflecting the growing desire from travellers to experience the natural world.

The UK provides a delicious mix of open-air experiences and cultural highlights. Home to England's deepest lake and highest peak, the beautiful Lake District topped the list of UK experiences ranking at No. 40 and natural attractions including the long-distance Wales Coast Path, which traces the Celtic countries entire coastline, scored the UK's highest new entry on the list polling at #82,

While UK cultural attractions such as the British Museum, beat some of the world's most iconic sights including the Eiffel Tower, Barcelona's Sagrada Familia and China's Terracotta Warriors.

© Press Release 2020