Sierra Leone’s Tiwai Island is one of the destinations featured on the 2026 Not Hot List, which is put together by Intrepid Travel. Tien Shan Mountain Range in Kyrgyzstan and Sierra Norte in Mexico also made the list
A beautiful country with an island of rainforest receives hardly any visitors, despite the launch of direct UK flights.
Each year, Intrepid Travel releases its Not Hot List, which showcases 10 lesser-known destinations that it says are “ready to welcome more visitors in 2026”. The list is designed to direct travellers towards regions where their presence can have a positive impact.
One of the destinations on the list is Sierra Leone, which recently launched a landmark 10-year tourism strategy to attract international travellers and recast the country as a leader in ecotourism.
“Rather than queues and crowds of travellers, Sierra Leone will greet you with untamed landscapes and a genuine warmth from the local communities. In 2024, the country welcomed just 60,890 international overnight visitors – a fraction of the 1.2 million recorded for Ghana, one of West Africa’s most popular destinations,” Intrepid’s Not Hot List explains.
READ MORE: Europe holiday hotspots becoming ‘ghost towns’ with empty hotels and dead nightlifeREAD MORE: ‘Resorts are becoming ghost towns but it’s not protests that are to blame’
“But after President Julius Maada Bio introduced Sierra Leone’s first-ever 10-year tourism strategy in 2024, a bold plan was put in place to recast the country as a leader in sustainable travel.”
The effort to change Sierra Leone’s global reputation and welcome in more international tourists follows in the long wake of the civil war, which raged for a decade and saw 70,000 people killed and 2.5 million displaced.
The country enjoyed some good news earlier this year when direct London flights launched and a new solar-powered airport terminal opened.
At the heart of Sierra Leone’s tourism transformation is Tiwai Island. Renowned for its diverse populations of animals and part of the Gola Forest National Park, it’s a sanctuary of rare flora and fauna.
The island celebrated a historic milestone when it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in July 2025. It’s managed by the Environmental Foundation for Africa, which collaborates with eight local communities that reinvest all tourism revenue into community development.
Intrepid travellers can be among the few visitors to explore Tiwai Island on its new eight-day Sierra Leone Adventure: History, Culture & Nature trip. They can a night on Tiwai Island, enveloped by rainforest, where local guides will take them on night walks through dense jungle and serene boat cruises along the Moa River.
All the destinations on the Not Hot list currently attract relatively few international visitors.
The 2026 Not Hot List features:
- Tiwai Island, Sierra Leone
- Tien Shan Mountain Range, Kyrgyzstan
- Sierra Norte, Mexico
- Vis Island, Croatia
- Gaziantep, Türkiye
- Arunachal Pradesh, India
- Via Transilvanica, Romania
- Ruta de las Flores, El Salvador
- Oulu, Finland
- Great Basin National Park, Nevada, US
Hazel McGuire, Intrepid’s chief marketing officer, told me: “(The Not Hot List) is about saying ‘there are better ways to travel’. One of the ways of doing this is by looking beyond those destinations. There are countries like Sierra Leone that has a very tragic history, and iss trying to come back onto the tourism stage. They are looking to do it in a really sustainable way.
“The Not Hot list shines a light on things countries and destinations are doing themselves. We don’t run tours to all of them. It’s not intended to be a marketing campaign for Intrepid trips.”
READ MORE: Should tourists pay an ‘eco-tax’? Take our poll and have your say
Overtourism is increasingly an issue in many destinations worldwide, and Intrepid is keen to avoid contributing to it where it can.
“We have made some adjustments to tours. We might change where we stay, out of city rather than in, for example. In Dubrovnik, the city walls become excessively busy during peak times. Now we show people the city walls at six or seven at night,” Hazel explained.
“We don’t want to say that these destinations aren’t worth visiting; they’ve become popular for a reason.
“There are vast sways of Spain where mainstream tourism isn’t there. Our tours aren’t on the mainstream tourism trail. We do touch into Barcelona and Madrid, but we are spreading the benefits of tourism more widely.
“We also look at how we can spread tourism throughout the year. May and October departures in Europe are extended. It is up 100% during the shoulder season in Greece.”
