It’s that time of year again where every guidebook publisher, newspaper travel section and website trots out its list of the top ten hot travel destinations for 2010. From Lonely Planet to the Guardian, you can guarantee that anyone who’s anyone will have their own spurious list. And, therefore, Grumpy Traveller shall do too.

This list has been exhaustively researched and is based on absolute truth. I have not in any way just picked ten random destinations from the top of my head.

Bergamo, Italy

Because if we say Rome, Florence or Venice, it looks like we’ve been lazy and not done our job properly. There’s not actually much to see in Bergamo, but we’ll pretend there is anyway for the sake of looking cool.

Belarus

Because all the other Eastern European shitholes have already been covered in previous years.

Liberia

There hasn’t been a war there for about 27 minutes. Ergo, it surely must be the hot new destination for intrepid types. There’s probably at least one reasonably nice beach where you’re unlikely to have your arm lopped off with a machete.

Lexington, Kentucky

Tradition dictates that at least one entry on these lists has to be linked to a major sporting event. Picking the football World Cup in South Africa or Winter Olympics in Vancouver is for the plebs, however. We’re cool. We know that the World Equestrian Championship takes place in Lexington this September and October. Hell yeah; take that Condé Nast.

St Lucia

Because an expensive five star resort chain which provides this site with copious amounts of advertising revenue has just opened there.

Benin

Damn – we need somewhere that’s celebrating some kind of anniversary, don’t we? Um, er… Benin’ll do. It became independent from France in 1960, so it’s got to be hot.

Redonda, Antigua and Barbuda

OK, so it’s big uninhabited rock. But we sound impressive by knowing it exists, and besides, we’ve already used the other Caribbean islands in the past.

Glasgow, Scotland

It is mandatory to include Glasgow on these lists. Someone will decide Glasgow is newly hip every year, seemingly oblivious to all the other publications that have been doing exactly the same thing since 1988. To comply with international law, I must also state that it is fast becoming Scotland’s cultural capital and is giving Edinburgh a serious run for its money.

Belfast, Northern Ireland

See Glasgow.

The Nullarbor Plain, Australia

That’ll be the unheralded area of big, popular country box ticked then. Who cares if it’s bland, featureless and probably the last place anyone visiting that country would sensibly wish to visit? It’s new. GET WITH THE PROGRAMME.

And 2010’s top new hip hotel…

Hotel Whank, Chipping Norton, England

Promising to put the ‘hip’ back into Chipping Norton, this stylish 364 star boutique design art hotel is owned by Theo from the Cosby Show and the drummer from Snow Patrol. The beds have been hand-carved from jelly and the menu in the Whank bistro has been specially chosen by someone who once filled in for Phil Vickery on This Morning.

The lobby features a glass pyramid that Sir Norman Foster shat out while he was drunk.