Every year, between May and June, the same conversations begin: “Where are we going this year?“

You open Instagram, Google Maps, read a few articles on the fly and within half an hour you find yourself evaluating the same five destinations that everyone is looking at.
After a few years of traveling and managing vacation rentals, we noticed something curious: a lot of people they don't choose the destination they really want. They choose the one they see most often.
It is one of the side effects of contemporary tourism. The more a destination appears on social media, the more inevitable it seems.

Yet understand how to choose a summer destination it doesn't mean finding the most famous place of the moment. It means finding a place that allows you to enjoy your free time in the way you really want.
The difference seems subtle. In reality, everything changes.

Before choosing where to go, ask yourself how you want to stay

Many start by searching “where to go on summer holiday”, we would start from a different question.

How do you want to be when you get there?

Do you want to wake up early and spend the day on the move? Do you want to alternate the sea and walks? Do you need to completely disconnect from notifications, traffic and schedules?
The destination comes later, the pace comes first.

Active holiday or relaxation?

There are those who return from holidays with the phone full of photos of trails, views and bicycles. And those who come back satisfied because they did practically nothing for a week.
Both holidays can be perfect.

The mistake is choosing a destination designed for a different pace than your own.
If you love being outdoors, a location that only offers a beach may tire you out after a few days.
If you need to slow down, a destination built around a continuous schedule of activities may have the opposite effect.

Are you traveling as a couple, family or friends?

The company also matters much more than the destination.
The best summer family vacation often they are not the ones with the most attractions, but the ones that make everything easier.
Being able to go out on foot to get an ice cream. Have a supermarket nearby. Getting to the sea without turning every trip into a small expedition.

These are details that rarely appear in brochures but which make the difference between a relaxing holiday and a tiring one.

The best alternative summer destinations: look beyond the postcard

There is a word that in recent years has become almost obligatory: unmissable.
The problem is that the "unmissables" are often the same for everyone.

The truth is that FOMO, the fear of missing out, ruins more vacations than we imagine. We cross half of Europe to see a place that we have already seen a hundred times on a phone screen.

You queue up for a photo, you run from one point to another to check off a list.
Then you return home with the feeling of having seen a lot but experienced little.

Perhaps true luxury today is the opposite.
Don't see everything but choose.

Missing a famous beach to discover a lesser-known cove, skipping the restaurant recommended by everyone to stop in a restaurant that doesn't appear in any guide.

The best alternative summer destinations they are not necessarily secret places. They are places that allow you to experience the area on your own terms.

How to organize summer holidays without crowds and outside the usual circuits

If there is one request that we see growing every year it is this: to find summer holidays without crowds.

There is a simple way to achieve this: stop choosing a destination only for its main attraction, the best locations are those that have multiple levels.

Sea, paths, small villages, markets, nature trails, lesser-known corners. When an area offers many possibilities, people spread out and the place breathes better.

We use a little unwritten rule: we call it the 15 minute rule.
If to buy fresh bread in the morning, have a coffee or start a walk you have to get in the car and drive for more than a quarter of an hour, you are probably not really experiencing the area.
It's simply moving the city's traffic to a nicer place.

The best slow travel holidays they begin when you can leave your car parked and forget about it for a few hours.

See what you can do, not just what you can see

Many destinations are chosen through photographs, but a holiday is not made of photographs, it is made up of days.
For this reason it is worth asking yourself what will really happen between one photo and another.

Let's take it Ligurian final: many arrive thinking above all of Varigotti and the beaches, then discover that some of the best moments are elsewhere.
Early in the morning in Finalborgo, when the shopkeepers are opening their shutters, the focaccia coming out of the oven, the bikers starting to climb towards the Manie plateau.
The chat over the first coffee, the sea is always there, but in the background. And that's exactly the point.

The best authentic summer destinations they are not the ones that offer a single experience. They are the ones that continue to surprise even after the second or third day.

Choosing the right holiday home: the key to experiencing the area

When you organize a holiday you dedicate a lot of time to choice of destination and very little to that of home.
Yet the house influences the journey more than you think, it can simply be a place to sleep or it can become the starting point for everything else.

A coffee taken outside the house, an unplanned walk, the possibility of returning after a day at the seaside and immediately feeling at ease.

This is why we believe that the stay is part of the experience as much as the territory.
It is one of the ideas behind A Place To Go: choosing places that allow you to feel at home even when you are elsewhere.

A good summer destination is one that resembles you

In the end, the best criterion is also the simplest: don't choose a destination because everyone is recommending it, don't choose it because it has gone viral but choose it because it fits the way you want to spend your time.

A week can be very long in the wrong place and surprisingly short in the right place.
If you're looking for inspiration for your next vacation, you can explore destinations, guides and the houses that we tell about A Place To Go.
Not because they are perfect.

But because they share a characteristic that matters most to us: they allow you to experience a place instead of just visiting it.
And often it is precisely there that the difference arises between a holiday that is forgotten and one that remains.