Top Honeymoon Destinations for 2024: Where We'd Actually Go (And One We'd Skip If We're Being Honest)
We've collectively logged enough honeymoon-destination research to qualify as either very dedicated travel writers or people with commitment issues. Either way, we know what works. The Maldives is as absurdly beautiful as it sounds. Paris does smell like warm butter and mild cigarette smoke, and it's intoxicating. Kyoto broke one of us emotionally in a bamboo grove at 7am, and we're not embarrassed about it. Here's where we'd send the person we actually like.
1. The Maldives — Yes, It's As Ridiculously Good As Everyone Says
The Maldives is the kind of place that makes you feel slightly guilty for how perfect it is. We stepped off a seaplane — an actual seaplane, which was part terrifying and part the most dramatic arrival we've ever made — onto a jetty so white it hurt to look at. The water underneath us was so clear we could see parrotfish minding their business four metres down before we'd even checked in.
Overwater villas are the whole point here, and yes, they're worth the money if you can swing it. You wake up to the sound of literally nothing except water. Not a scooter, not a neighbour, not a construction crew — just the Indian Ocean doing its thing. Snorkelling directly off your deck at sunrise, when the reef is all movement and colour and the rest of the world hasn't woken up yet, is the kind of moment you'll describe badly to people for years.
Eat mas huni for breakfast — tuna shredded with coconut and onion, scooped onto flatbread called roshi — and wonder why you've been eating cereal your whole life. If you make it to Malé, the capital, it's chaotic and fascinating in completely the opposite way to your resort island, and worth half a day. But honestly? You probably won't leave the beach. We didn't judge ourselves for it.
2. Santorini, Greece — Crowded, Clichéd, and Still Completely Worth It
We know. Every influencer on earth has stood in front of those blue-domed churches in Oia with a glass of wine. It's become a meme of itself. And yet, when we actually stood there at around 8pm in late September as the sun dropped into the caldera and turned everything copper and gold, every single one of us shut up and stared. It earns the hype. We hate that it earns the hype.
What is the best honeymoon destination in the world for 2024?
Honestly? It depends entirely on what kind of couple you are. If you want to dissolve into pure luxury and never speak to another tourist, the Maldives is hard to beat. If you want culture, history, and food that will reorganise your priorities in life, Kyoto or Marrakech will do things to you that a beach villa never could. We'd argue the "best" destination is the one that scares you slightly — in the best way — because that's what you'll still be talking about in twenty years.
When is the best time to visit Santorini for a honeymoon?
May, early June, or September and October. We cannot stress this enough. July and August are beautiful and absolutely mobbed — a thousand cruise ships arrive simultaneously, the caldera path in Oia is shoulder-to-shoulder, and getting a sunset dinner table requires planning that rivals military logistics. Shoulder season gives you the same legendary light, the same extraordinary wine, considerably fewer elbows in your face, and meaningfully lower prices on everything from accommodation to ferry tickets.
Is Bali a good honeymoon destination for couples who want both culture and beach time?
It's genuinely one of the best places in the world for exactly that combination. You can spend two days in Ubud watching silversmith workshops and attending a Kecak fire dance at a clifftop temple, then drive south and be on a sunlounger in Seminyak by afternoon. The island is small enough to be versatile and varied enough that two weeks barely scratches it. The food is incredible at every price point, the people are genuinely warm, and the spiritual atmosphere of the place — the daily offerings at every doorstep, the temple bells, the incense — gives it a texture that purely resort destinations just don't have.
How far in advance should you book a Maldives honeymoon?
The better overwater villa resorts book out six to twelve months ahead, particularly for peak season between November and April when the weather is at its most reliable. If you have a specific resort in mind — and the Maldives is a place where the resort really matters, since you'll be spending most of your time on it — book as early as you possibly can. Seaplane transfers also have limited daily capacity, and they're the only way to reach the more remote atolls, so don't assume you can sort the logistics closer to the date.
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Planning a trip should be exciting, not exhausting—and that's where Travelfika comes in! With our smart AI-powered tools, insider tips, and seamless planning features, we make travel easier than ever.
Whether you're crafting the perfect itinerary, discovering hidden spots, or getting real-time recommendations, Travelfika has your back. No more endless research—just smooth, effortless travel planning tailored to you.Read More
Planning a trip should be exciting, not exhausting—and that's where Travelfika comes in! With our smart AI-powered tools, insider tips, and seamless planning features, we make travel easier than ever.
Whether you're crafting the perfect itinerary, discovering hidden spots, or getting real-time recommendations, Travelfika has your back.Read More
Planning a trip should be exciting, not exhausting—and that's where Travelfika comes in! With our smart AI-powered tools, insider tips, and seamless planning features, we make travel easier than ever. Read More
Planning a trip should be exciting, not exhausting— and that's where Travelfika comes in! With our smart AI-powered tools, insider tips, and seamless planning features. Read More
The trick with Santorini is timing. July and August are a slow-moving, sunburned queue. Come in May or October and the island transforms — quieter streets, the same legendary sunset, and you can actually get a table at a cliffside restaurant without a reservation made three months in advance. The volcanic sand beaches — black at Perissa, deep red at Akrotiri — are unlike anything else in the Mediterranean, and the Ancient Akrotiri archaeological site is genuinely fascinating, a Bronze Age city preserved under volcanic ash like a Greek Pompeii.
The food rewards curiosity. Skip the tourist-strip calamari and find a family-run taverna serving fava — yellow split pea purée with olive oil and capers — and fresh grilled octopus that's been hanging in the sun all afternoon. Pair it with Assyrtiko, the local white wine that tastes like minerals and sea air, and you'll start planning your return trip before you've finished the bottle.
3. Bali, Indonesia — It Will Ruin You For Regular Life
We say this with love: Bali is an assault on every single one of your senses, and you will be completely fine with it. The smell alone — incense, frangipani, clove cigarettes, something frying in a wok nearby — hits you before you've even left the airport taxi. It's the kind of place that gets under your skin in the first 48 hours and stays there permanently.
Ubud is where you go to feel culturally rich and quietly overwhelmed. The rice terraces at Tegallalang catch the morning light in a way that's almost unfair, and watching a Kecak fire dance performance at Uluwatu temple — perched on a cliff above the Indian Ocean as the sun goes down — is one of the most theatrical things we've ever experienced outside an actual theatre. Seminyak handles the beach club side of things: good cocktails, sunset drinks with your feet in the sand, and enough boutiques to do serious damage to your credit card.
Eat everything. Nasi goreng at a warung at midnight — fried rice with a fried egg on top, eaten under a single bare bulb while motorbikes go past — costs less than a bus fare back home and tastes better than most things you've paid real money for. If you're feeling brave, babi guling is slow-roasted suckling pig that people drive hours for. Bali is the rare place that manages to be spiritual, hedonistic, delicious, and beautiful all at once. It shouldn't work. It absolutely does.
4. Paris, France — Still The One
Paris is so relentlessly itself that it's almost aggressive about it. The city smells like fresh bread in the morning, cigarette smoke by afternoon, and wine and garlic by evening, and at no point does any of it feel like anything other than exactly right. We've all been multiple times and we still got a little giddy walking across Pont des Arts at dusk with the Seine going silver below us.
The Eiffel Tower is, objectively, a piece of Victorian-era engineering that should look ridiculous and instead looks perfect. Go at night when it sparkles on the hour — yes, it actually sparkles, 20,000 bulbs, it's completely over the top and you'll love it. The Louvre will take more time than you think; even just the Denon wing could eat a full day. Montmartre is legitimately beautiful in the early morning before the tourist crowds arrive and the streets are just bakers and locals and the distant sound of someone playing accordion badly.
But forget the museums for a moment. The best thing you can do in Paris is eat without a plan. Stop at a boulangerie and eat a croissant standing on the pavement. Sit at a zinc bar and order a kir. Find a corner bistro serving steak frites and eat it at a tiny table so close to the next couple that you're essentially on a double date. Paris works because it insists on pleasure at every level, and for a honeymoon, that's exactly the point.
5. Kyoto, Japan — The One That Broke Us (In the Best Way)
One of us cried in the Arashiyama bamboo grove and we're absolutely including it in this write-up because it's relevant. It was 6:45am, the light was coming through the bamboo in long pale columns, and it was so quiet you could hear it growing. Not everyone cries in Kyoto, but everyone understands why someone would.
Kyoto is Japan's cultural memory made physical. The Golden Pavilion — Kinkaku-ji — is genuinely gold and genuinely reflects in its pond and genuinely looks like it was designed by someone who had run out of restraint. The Fushimi Inari shrine sends you through thousands of red torii gates up a mountain, and if you go in the early morning or late evening you'll have stretches of it almost to yourself, which changes the experience completely. The Gion district at dusk, where the wooden machiya townhouses glow amber and if you're lucky you'll see a geiko (the Kyoto word for geisha) moving quietly between appointments, is one of the most beautiful urban streetscapes in the world.
The food is precise and seasonal. A kaiseki dinner — multi-course, every dish a small considered thing — is an event, not just a meal. If that sounds like a lot, yudofu, silken tofu simmered in a light kelp broth and eaten in a garden restaurant near Nanzen-ji temple, is the most peaceful meal we've ever had. Kyoto doesn't need you to be dramatic. It's doing that for you.
6. Hawaii (Maui, Specifically) — Where You Eat Poke and Feel No Guilt About Anything
Let's just say Maui and Hawaii in the same breath because Maui is where you want to be and we're not going to pretend otherwise. Waikiki is iconic but Maui is the one that sticks. The Road to Hana is 64 kilometres of switchbacks through rainforest that smell like wet earth and flowers, past waterfalls that appear so suddenly you have to screech the car to a stop. Haleakalā National Park, where you drive to the crater rim at 3,000 metres and watch the sunrise above the clouds, is the kind of experience that recalibrates something in your brain.
Snorkelling at Molokini Crater — a half-submerged volcanic caldera three miles offshore — puts you in water so clear and full of reef fish that you start to feel like the ocean is showing off. Then you drive back to Lahaina, eat poke — raw tuna, sesame oil, sea salt, rice — sitting on a wall by the harbour, and wonder why you ever ate anything else.
Hawaii earns every romantic cliché attached to it. The sunsets turn the ocean pink and orange and sometimes briefly purple, and a luau — real fire, real drumming, the whole thing — is either deeply moving or deeply silly depending on your disposition, but either way you're glad you went. Hawaiian hospitality, the aloha spirit people reference constantly, is not a tourism slogan. People here are genuinely warm and it changes the atmosphere of everything.
7. Venice, Italy — It Floods and You Won't Care
Venice smells like canal water and old stone and occasionally something you'd rather not identify, and it is one of the most beautiful cities on earth. These facts coexist peacefully. We arrived in November — peak acqua alta season — and spent one morning navigating the raised wooden walkways across a flooded Piazza San Marco in boots, coffee in hand, and we loved every second of it. The city is dramatic in all seasons.
The Grand Canal by gondola is not overrated. Yes, every tourist does it. Do it anyway. The light in Venice — the way it bounces off water and up onto the facades of palaces that have been there for six hundred years — is unlike anywhere else. Get lost in Dorsoduro and Cannaregio, the quieter sestieri where locals actually live, where the streets narrow to single-person width and you turn a corner into a small campo with a wellhead and a cat and nobody else around.
Cicchetti — Venice's answer to tapas, tiny rounds of bread topped with salt cod, cured meats, or artichoke — eaten standing at a bacaro bar with a small glass of local white wine called ombra, is the correct way to eat lunch here. Follow it with a fresh seafood risotto that's more liquid than you expect, because that's how they make it, and you'll understand why people come back to Venice for the rest of their lives even knowing it floods.
8. Queenstown, New Zealand — Hold Your Partner's Hand, Mostly Because You're Terrified
Queenstown is technically an adventure destination that someone decided to market to honeymooners, and the combination is genuinely inspired. The Southern Alps are so dramatic behind the town that they look slightly fake, like the background of a film set. Lake Wakatipu is so cold and blue it looks edited. And then someone offers to bungee jump you off a bridge and somehow you agree because you're on honeymoon and apparently that makes you brave.
Beyond the adrenaline options — and there are many, from jet boating to skydiving to the original Kawarau Bridge bungee — Queenstown is genuinely beautiful in a slow way too. A cruise on Lake Wakatipu to the historic Walter Peak High Country Farm is calm and lovely. The drive to Milford Sound, three hours through Fiordland National Park with waterfalls coming off cliffs directly onto the road, is one of the great drives of the Southern Hemisphere. The fiord itself, surrounded by sheer rock faces disappearing into grey mist, feels ancient and a little eerie and completely extraordinary.
The wine from Central Otago — specifically the Pinot Noir, which is what the cool summers and dramatic temperature swings here are built for — is excellent. Drink it in Arrowtown, a tiny gold-rush-era village twenty minutes from Queenstown, sitting outside a restaurant as the autumn leaves turn the valley orange. You can do terrifying things in the morning and beautiful quiet things in the afternoon, which is basically the ideal honeymoon rhythm.
9. Marrakech, Morocco — Every Single One of Your Senses, Simultaneously
Marrakech does not ease you in gently. You come through the gate into the Medina and immediately there is noise — motorcycle horns, someone calling from a minaret, a man trying to sell you slippers, a donkey that has opinions — and there is smell — cumin, leather tanning yards, rose water, something charring on a grill — and there is colour everywhere, and your brain just gives up trying to process it all individually and surrenders to the whole thing. It takes about ten minutes. Then it becomes the most intoxicating place you've ever been.
The souks are a maze in the literal sense. We got lost every single day and found something new each time — a tilemaker's workshop, a tiny café where men were playing cards and didn't look up, a courtyard riad you could glimpse through a door that looked like it opened onto another world. Bahia Palace, with its painted ceilings and mosaic courtyards, is extraordinary, and Jardin Majorelle — the electric-blue garden Yves Saint Laurent restored and loved — is a genuinely peaceful retreat in the middle of all the chaos.
Eat a tagine — lamb with preserved lemon and olives, or chicken with apricots and almonds — sitting on a rooftop with a view of the Koutoubia minaret. Drink mint tea that's so sweet it's practically candy and poured from a height for theatre. Book a hammam — a traditional steam bath and scrub — at least once, because you will emerge feeling like you've been returned to factory settings. Marrakech is a lot. It's exactly the right amount of a lot.
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Every single one of these places is extraordinary in a different way, and we'd stake our collective bylines on any of them for a honeymoon. The Maldives is for pure escapism. Santorini is for sunsets and wine. Bali is for the couple who wants culture with their beach. Paris is for the people who want to feel like they're in a film. Kyoto is for the quiet ones. Maui is for the ones who want to eat well and hike hard. Venice is for the romantics who don't mind wet feet. Queenstown is for the couple that communicates through shared near-death experiences. And Marrakech is for the two of you who want a story to tell for the rest of your lives.
Book well in advance, travel in shoulder season where you can, eat the local thing rather than the safe thing, and spend at least one evening with no plan whatsoever. That's where the real honeymoon memories come from.
Is Venice too touristy for a honeymoon in 2024?
Venice is undeniably busy, but the crowds are almost entirely concentrated in a small area — around St Mark's Square, the Rialto Bridge, and the main tourist drag connecting them. Walk fifteen minutes in any direction into Dorsoduro, Cannaregio, or Castello and you're in a completely different city: quieter streets, local bars, cats sleeping on canal bridges, almost no one else around. The key is going in November through March (cold but atmospheric and genuinely quiet) or arriving early and staying late each day. Venice rewards the people who put in the effort to get away from the main circuit. The people who stay on the main circuit and complain that it's crowded have only themselves to blame.
What should we eat on a honeymoon in Kyoto?
A kaiseki dinner at least once — it's an investment but it's also a three-hour multi-course experience where every dish is seasonal, beautiful, and considered, and it tells you more about Japanese culture than any temple visit. Beyond that, yudofu (silken tofu in dashi broth) at a garden restaurant near Nanzen-ji is meditative in the best way. Obanzai, the Kyoto style of home cooking — small dishes of pickled vegetables, grilled fish, simmered root vegetables — served at old wooden restaurants in Gion is both delicious and very affordable. And matcha everything: matcha soft serve, matcha tea in a proper tea ceremony, matcha-flavoured sweets called wagashi that look like tiny paintings and taste like green, clean, slightly bitter perfection.
Is Queenstown actually romantic or just an adventure destination?
Both, genuinely. There's something about shared adrenaline that accelerates intimacy — doing a bungee jump together, or a helicopter flight over the Remarkables mountain range, creates a very specific kind of bonding that a candlelit dinner doesn't. But Queenstown also does quiet romance extremely well: wine tasting in the Gibbston Valley, a steamship cruise at sunset on Lake Wakatipu, dinner in Arrowtown in a 150-year-old stone building while it snows outside. It's the destination for the couple that likes contrast, which, honestly, is most couples if they're being honest with themselves.
How many days do you need in Marrakech for a honeymoon?
Four to five days is the sweet spot. Two days in, you've found your bearings in the Medina and stopped getting aggressively lost. Three days in, you have a favourite café and a riad roof you like to sit on at sunset. By day four you've done the major sights — Bahia Palace, Jardin Majorelle, the tanneries, Jemaa el-Fna square at night — and you can spend your last day just wandering without agenda, which is when Marrakech is at its best. Go beyond five days and you risk sensory fatigue; the city is genuinely intense and a little rest from it — perhaps a day trip to the Atlas Mountains or the town of Essaouira on the coast — is worth building in.
