With around 82 percent of Americans planning to travel this summer and high expenses forcing many people to stay home, the personal-finance website WalletHub recently released its report on “2024’s Best & Worst Cities for Staycations.”
WalletHub compared more than 180 cities across 42 key indicators of an exciting yet wallet-friendly staycation. The data set ranged from parks and museums per capita to restaurant-meal costs.
The best cities for staycations were Orlando, Fla., Honolulu, Cincinnati, Las Vegas, Tampa, Fla., Chicago, San Diego, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Tucson, Ariz.
The worst cities were Moreno Valey, Calif., Santa Ana, Calif., Hialeah, Fla, Laredo, Texas, Santa Clarita, Calif., Yonkers, N.Y., Chula Vista, Calif., Perl City, Hawaii., Irving, Texas, and Fremont, Calif.
Best versus worst takeaways from the survey were:
- St. Louis has the most zoos and aquariums (per square root of population), which is 23.2 times more than in Phoenix, the city with the fewest.
- New York has the most parks (per square root of population), which is 49.9 times more than in San Francisco, the city with the fewest.
- Des Moines, Iowa, has the lowest cost of house-cleaning services, which is 4.1 times less expensive than in Juneau, Alaska, the city with the highest.