There are many good reasons to guzzle down a Japanese hotpot. First of all: it’s delicious. But fatigue from having kayaked in 32C temperatures through mangrove forests is rarely one of them.

That’s Okinawa for you. It’s Japan’s most southerly prefecture and the only one with a sub-tropical climate. This island chain, often called the Hawaii of Japan, is perhaps the only place where you can start your day, as I did, with a traditional Japanese onsen experience, continue it with a snorkel excursion among coral reefs, and end it with a steaming bowl of shabu-shabu.

The flight from Tokyo to Okinawa (both the name of the archipelago and of its main island) took about two-and-a-half hours. I’d booked both legs with Japanese airline ANA, so the transfer from my London–Tokyo flight to the domestic flight was very smooth, although you do still have to take your hold luggage through customs in Tokyo.

My plane touched down in Naha, the capital. The city is the gateway to the Kerama Islands and one of the best diving and snorkelling spots in Asia. While the ocean was a beautiful shade of turquoise, most of the city is a sprawling industrial port or mesh of high rise buildings. The loveliest bits of Okinawa’s main island are the beaches in the centre and the north, which is where I was headed.

I hopped on a group snorkelling tour of Kerama with snorkelling company Marine House Seasir (from ¥4,000 or £20 per adult for a half day). Within half an hour’s boat ride we were all gasping at the clear ocean. In parts you can see 40 or 50 metres deep and the water is a crystallised aquamarine colour so distinctive it has its own name: Kerama blue.

The area is known for its whale sharks, manta rays, sea turtles and even breeding humpback whales (the latter can be seen from December to March). Sadly none decided to come and play while I was there but we did see plenty of clownfish and rainbow parrotfish. The pristine lagoons fringed with coral reefs could have come straight out of a travel brochure for the Maldives.

Back on dry land, I began the one-hour drive up north to Hoshinya Okinawa, my hotel. Okinawa has almost no public transport so I relied on taxis during this trip. However, as I learned, the Japanese are impeccably polite behind the wheel and drive on the same side as in the UK so next time I’d consider hiring a car.

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Hoshinya continued the Maldivian vibe. The palatial suites come with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the sea for sunset snaps and access to a private beach. But there’s a deeper cultural side you don’t get in most high-end beach resorts, including a nightly performance of traditional Okinawan art. That evening I was treated to a bout of haunting singing and sanshin (a kind of ancient local banjo).

You can also row out to sea before breakfast with some local fisherman in a sabani (Okinawan wood boat) to hear about the local coral or take a lesson in karate, whose deepest origins lie right on this island.

However all this luxury doesn’t come cheap, with prices starting from ¥170,000 (£852) per night. At the other end of the scale, you can get a very comfortable double room at Ryukyu Onsen Senagajima Hotel for ¥24,000 (£120), including access to the hotel’s onsen spa and a slap-up Japanese breakfast.

But Hoshinoya’s appeal also came from its location – on the west side of the island near some of its best white sand beaches, like Nirai Beach (where you might see nesting sea turtles) and Zanpa Beach (more popular, with banana boat rides and snorkelling).

The surrounding Nakagami region is brimming with things to see and do, including the Southeast Botanical Gardens (one of the largest in Japan) and the famous artisan pottery workshops of Yomitan village.

The next day I decided to ditch the barefoot luxury and experience Okinawa’s wilder side, with a kayak excursion through the mangrove forests (from ¥10,150 or £51 per person). Around an hour’s taxi drive north of Hoshinoya is a stunning inland sea called Haneji , where Nik Brogan, originally from South Devon, has been leading kayak tours on the island for the past seven years and, as I learned, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of the local flora and fauna.

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Less than 100 years later, the islands were severely impacted by the Second World War. The Battle of Okinawa is regarded as one of the bloodiest Pacific skirmishes of the conflict, leaving the island in ash and under US military control for 27 years.

This difficult history gave Okinawa cultural legacies you won’t find anywhere else in Japan. All around the island, there are restaurants serving dishes like taco rice (a Tex-Mex-Japanese fusion invented locally to cater to American soldiers’ palates), and onigiri (rice balls) stuffed with Spam.

“Spam has become a staple on Okinawa since the US military gave it out to starving families after the war,” Junko Yokoo of Japan Guide Junko, a local tour company, explained.

The traditional Ryukyu cuisine is also being revived. The pork that I had piled into my shabu-shabu post-kayaking was a local speciality, agu, famous for its sweet marbled fat. The pig breed almost went extinct during the war but is now being rehabilitated.

“We feel different from people on the mainland,” Keito Shimabukuro from the Okinawa tourist board told me. “We are more relaxed. Over there, everyone is so busy rushing around.”

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Most people I spoke to couldn’t believe Okinawa was the first place I’d ever visited in Japan. But I still got everything I wanted from a trip to the country: superb food presented as artistic masterpieces, uber-clean accommodation (and those famous Toto toilets), flawlessly polite service, and plenty of enriching history and culture. Plus the added bonus of getting to gaze at some of the world’s most beautiful beaches as I kayaked, snorkelled and swam.

With all that calorie burning, you’re going to need to throw some more of that delicious agu pork belly in your shabu-shabu.

Marianna Hunt was a guest of ANA (All Nippon Airways), Okinawa Prefecture (visitokinawajapan.com) and Hoshinoya Okinawa.

How to get there

Return flights from London Heathrow to Okinawa (with a change in Tokyo) start from £939.

Where to stay

Push the boat out at Hoshinoya Okinawa or keep costs lower with a stay at Ryukyu Onsen Senagajima Hotel.

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Then my husband, Geordie, looks down at the phone and sees a tattooed arm (which definitely doesn’t belong to our two-year-old) moving across the screen of the phone left in the bedroom. Someone else is in our hotel room. Geordie hurtles off. A few frantic minutes later, I find him trying to get his heart rate back to normal. It turns out that a cleaner had been putting some Lindt chocolates beside our bed. Various lessons can be learnt here but, for starters, if you are going to leave a toddler unattended in your hotel room, first put the “Do not disturb” sign on the door and sacrifice the chocs.

Tenerife is a great option for young families

Slack parenting methods aside, this holiday was chosen largely with Reggie in mind: a buckets and spades break with no time difference, a short (ish) flight and (practically) guaranteed good weather. In mid-March not many places tick those boxes besides Tenerife, which is perhaps why our friends who’re also in the young family phase keep going there. It’s a four-hour flight, on the same time zone as the UK and, if you stay in the more touristy southern part of the island, the sun is likely to have his hat on. In my mind this time of life is precious. With no children of school age yet, we can avoid overly expensive flights (we paid £763 for three return flights from Gatwick) and the crowds that come in the school holidays.

The hotel’s multiple pools are largely empty, the oceanfront tables at breakfast are free and Abama beach is busy but not overly so. A small train takes you down the resort’s hillside to the beach cove. On our first day, we meet a German father with his three-year-old daughter who are riding the train up and down for the morning without ever getting off. It’s funny how the goalposts of a successful holiday change once children come along.

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We spend three days at the Ritz-Carlton bouncing between the pools, the playground and the beach where Reggie meets Ronnie, a British toddler friend. Gangster twins in their UPF 50+ swimsuits.

I tag out of parenting for a few hours to escape to the spa. Ingrid the masseuse gives me the Earth, Wind and Fire treatment, the massage for people who feel like they must earn a massage. To begin, you receive a gentle sandpapering with lava sand poured over your body and exfoliated off. Warning: do not get sunburnt before this treatment. Then comes the indulgent bit, the massage with hot stones, hot hands and hot towels.

Hunting lizards on a hike

A 20-minute drive north up the coast is Santiago del Teide, where we walk the Chinyero trail (named after the looming volcano) among the pink-blossomed almond trees and wild flowers. The hike is rebranded as a “Lizard Hunt” for the toddler, which keeps spirits high for the two-hour loop up the rocky terrain, across farm plots and vineyards and, at one point, through some beehives. (The buzzing builds, I close my mouth, get Reggie on my shoulders and run.) We get briefly lost, end up in a valley of cacti and have to turn back on ourselves just as the midday heat is picking up. “A fun little detour,” says Geordie, the chief map-reader.

Back in the car for another 20 minutes to the coast to Los Gigantes to see the 800m towering cliffs and black-sand beaches below. With tired legs, we reach the trail’s head to get a proper cliff view before turning back for chocolate chip cookies and coffees at Huggin a Mug café. Definitely a trail to do without little ones.

A change of hotel — and scene

Halfway through we change hotels and head 20 minutes’ drive south to the more bustling Costa Adeje to stay at Iberostar Selection Anthelia, another mammoth hotel suited to young families. While Reggie has discos and activities in the kids’ area, I join in with the daily exercise class led by twinkly-eyed Mario in the main (thankfully heated) pool. “Beautiful”, “lovely”, yells Mario from the pool’s edge as about twenty hotel guests ranging from their twenties to their seventies jump around happily with foam noodles.

• Read our full guide to Tenerife

Exploring Mount Teide, toddler style

As Tenerife first-timers, the island’s most famous attraction, Mount Teide, also Spain’s highest peak (3,715m), feels like a must. Up early one morning, after a drive-by at the buffet (pancakes, custard pastries, cakes, hot chocolates for the two-year-old; “we’re on holiday”, we tell ourselves), we drive for an hour of sharp bends, descending fog and the current favourite song, Colonel Hathi’s March (“hup, two, three, four”), from The Jungle Book, on repeat. “It’s definitely brightening up”; “there’s blue sky over there”, we say as the landscape changes from lush pines to lunar rock formations. We’re not hiking up the volcano but have bought two online tickets for the 9.10am cable car to take us up to a height of 3,555m in a matter of minutes instead.

• 17 best all-inclusive hotels in Tenerife for a break in the sun

Except, on arrival, we learn that the cable car is closed for the morning because there are winds of 80mph at the top and, besides, only children aged three and up are allowed. (We’d wrongly assumed that you couldn’t buy tickets online for two-year-olds because they go free.)

The aristocratic northern town of La Orotava receives few British visitors

Ah well. We’re at least higher than the clouds now and the sky is blue so we pivot and instead go for a walk in the Teide National Park clambering up the towering rocks and pocked Star Trek-esque terrain. “Lizard Hunt” round two.

Then we’re back down the volcano (“hup, two, three, four”) to La Orotava, an aristocratic town in the north which has far more beautiful architecture and far fewer British tourists. It’s raining (stay south with the Brits if you want the sun) so after a soggy stroll among the gardens we duck into the Club Social Liceo Taoro for dulce de leche biscuits and more hot chocolates. Wet weather plus toddler doesn’t equal calm and enjoyable exploration of architecture, which is how we find ourselves at the lunchtime parrot show at Loro Parque, the island’s zoo.

Back to the beach

En route back south, we first head off the main road to find one of the island’s guachinche, a traditional family-run restaurant. Nestled in a banana plantation is El Rincon de Edu, unassuming but reassuringly full of locals, where we squabble over who gets the most papas arrugadas: small salt-flecked baked potatoes that you dip in red or green mojo sauces. After befriending the restaurant’s cats, Reggie totters outside to find his pudding: two ripe bananas plucked from the tree.

Costa Adeje’s seafront has mini-golf and soft play

Adventuring achieved, we spend the final day on Costa Adeje’s seafront promenade. Reggie plays mini-golf, tears around the beachside soft play (Adventure Land) and negotiates multiple ice creams. I’m at peace with the changed goalposts of what makes a satisfying break. Avoid the tourist-stuffed Playa de las Americas in the south of the town and instead walk north to the quieter Playa del Duque. This end is more pink bougainvillea, less Burger King. Just in time, we learn a good lesson: if you book a 6.15pm table at SeaSoul (one of the Iberostar hotel’s four restaurants) you’ll be eating locally caught grilled octopus and fat, juicy prawns on the oceanfront as the sun sets. Plus, you can bring your child and dodge any Whatsapp baby monitor debacles. A win.
Laura Pullman was a guest of Ritz-Carlton Tenerife, Abama, which has B&B doubles from £240 (ritzcarlton.com) and Iberostar Selection Anthelia, which has all-inclusive doubles from £213 (iberostar.com). Fly to Tenerife

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – The number of international travelers booking trips to the United States continues to slump. 

Travel research firm Tourism Economics predicts that the U.S. will see 8% fewer international visitors this year. Industry experts cite a combination of unpopular policies under the Trump administration and rising travel costs as contributing factors.

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Big picture view:

For many visitors, political perceptions are shaping travel decisions. 

“It is because of the political climate, of course,” said Jenny Hovre, who is visiting from Sweden. “We, from Sweden, we’re not so fond of the guy in charge [President Trump], so a lot of people go to different places instead of going to the States.”

The World Travel and Tourism Council projects the U.S. will lose $12.5 billion in revenue in 2025 from declining international tourism. Destinations like Las Vegas are already feeling the hit.

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Are Florida beaches still a draw? 

Local perspective:

At an August 20 tourism board meeting in Pinellas County, officials reviewed numbers showing significant drops from key international markets. Hotels reported 40% fewer Canadian visitors, correlating with a 35% revenue loss compared to last year. 

British, Swiss, and German travelers are also holding off on trips to the area, mirroring numbers seen on a national scale.

But, Clearwater Mayor Bruce Rector said the numbers don’t tell the full story, noting some local businesses had seen more visitors at their location.

“Yes, we are down, but we are having great success. We are as attractive to tourists as ever,” Rector said. 

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The other side:

Officials at Visit St. Pete Clearwater emphasized that international travelers make up less than 10% of the region’s overall visitors. Those who did come stayed longer. 

New direct flights from Tampa International Airport to Mexico City and Colombia have expanded the area’s global reach. The area saw an increase in Mexican tourists.

Local businesses are also seeing success despite the broader trends. 

“We’ve had the best June we’ve ever had,” said Dylan Hubbard of Hubbard’s marina. 

By the numbers:

Visit Florida reported that 100,000 fewer Canadians have traveled to the state so far this year. However, tourism officials noted that international visitors from other countries in Quarter 2 helped offset that shortfall.

The highly anticipated opening of Epic Universe in Orlando is credited with attracting many of those international visitors.