(CNN) It’s one of the most hotly anticipated travel guides of any year — the annual survey of destinations Lonely Planet is recommending for 2016.
The travel giant’s “Best in Travel 2016” is a roundup of top as well as emerging destinations and experiences.
The collection “highlights not the places travelers are headed to next year, but the places our team determined they should visit,” says Tom Hall, Lonely Planet’s editorial director.
Botswana has “some of the greatest wildlife spectacles on Earth,” from elephants and antelopes, to big cats and African wild dogs.
The slogan of the Greenland tourist board is “Be a pioneer” — picking up the torch, Lonely Planet is encouraging travelers to venture north by choosing it as its No. 9 pick.
Lonely Planet says there’s more to the area than vampire lore, Saxon villages and fortified churches.
No. 10 among regions is St. Helena. Napoleon’s remote island exile will open to tourism next year with the arrival of a new airport.
“Despite drawing in day-trippers by the busload, the area’s well-protected and spread-out natural attractions have somehow managed to escape the frenzied tourist circus of other less well-managed places,” says Lonely Planet.
The coastal town of Kotor in Montenegro was recently named by Royal Caribbean cruise ship captains as having one of the world’s most beautiful harbors.
Now it’s been honored by Lonely Planet, which has named it top city for 2016.
Other go-to cities include the Western Australian port city of Fremantle and its 110-year-old Fremantle Festival, and George Town, Malaysia’s foodie capital.
Estonia is LP’s 2016 best value destination.
The Celtic-flavored city of Galicia in northwest Spain and Asia’s newest country, Timor-Leste (also known as East Timor), also made the list.
Down time: California’s Esalen Institute is the third best place for silence.
Lonely Planet also has a whole bunch of thematic lists, including Best Mustache Destinations (Portland, Oregon, is No.2), Best Places for Silence (California’s Esalen Institute is No .3) and Best Places to Elope (Lake Tahoe and nearby Reno, Nevada, are No.8).
In addition to being published in the Best in Travel 2016 book, the Top 10 picks will be available online at lonelyplanet.com/best-in-travel and in the inaugural issue of Lonely Planet’s new U.S. magazine “Lonely Planet,” which hits newsstands November 3.