The Best Places to Go in Australia, New Zealand & the South Pacific in 2025

25.11.2024 - 07:03 / cntraveler.com / Coral Coast

When it comes to deciding the best places to go in Oceania, a vast region that encompasses Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands, it’s easy to get lost in the superlative landscape of rugged peaks, lost valleys, neon reefs, and red-rock desert. For this year’s 2025 list, we cast the net wide and asked our team of experts and contributors to dig deep beyond just the obvious charms.

What we have is a list that reflects our changing relationship to tourism and reasons to travel. We’re highlighting Sydney’s ‘second city,’ a multicultural hub away from the Harbor Bridge and Opera House. In Australia’s Top End, we’re shining a spotlight on locally owned tours and Indigenous storytellers offering travelers authentic perspectives on the place they have roots in. Taupō on New Zealand’s North Island may be famous for its lake and waterfalls, but it’s also a food destination on the rise. For island lovers, there’s good news, too—Palau, with new infrastructure, has never been so ready for your visit.

Here, then, are the best places to go in Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific in 2025. Some might be old favorites with new reasons to visit, and others complete surprises off-the-beaten track—a variety that makes travel to Oceania in 2025 more exciting than ever. —Chloe Sachdev

This is part of our global guide to the Best Places to Go in 2025—find more travel inspiration here.

Go for: access to Ningaloo reef, dazzling beaches, and family-friendly lodging right on the water

Western Australia’s Coral Coast—and its UNESCO World Heritage–listed Ningaloo (Nyinggulu) Reef—will sparkle like a jewel in 2025. Eco-friendly road trips to the Ningaloo Reef, which stretches along the coastline for a whopping 162 miles, are now easier thanks to the new Queensland Electric Super Highway. It’s one of the longest EV-designed highways in the world, and by the end of 2024 it will have 79 charging stations along the route. In this remote landscape, where rust red dirt meets white-sand beaches and Indian Ocean blues, the caravan park town of Coral Bay—population 245—is shaking off its outback dust with a top-to-toe $46 million renovation of its Ningaloo Reef Resort. The major glow-up, to be revealed in 2027, will cement this as the ideal base camp for families wishing to be a shell’s toss from Australia’s “other reef.” A huge step forward for regional tourism and this barefoot town, the revitalized resort will leverage Western Australia’s endless sunshine to power 90 hotel rooms with solar energy (there will also be plenty of EV charging stations compatible with the new highway). The resort’s location right on the edge of Ningaloo Marine Park allows guests to paddle directly to the reef and experience an underwater