A lot of our readers like to collect frequent flyer miles and hotel points. Both are excellent ways to save money when you’re traveling. However, being able to save on airfare and accommodations doesn’t necessarily mean you’re off the hook when it comes to spending a chunk of change on your vacation. There are plenty – and I mean PLENTY – of other factors that need to be included in that bottom line. Food. Tickets. Souvenirs. Much more.
And, not surprisingly, some of those “extras” cost significantly more in some parts of the country than others.
GOBankingRates.com, an online personal finance site based in Kailua, Hawaii, looked at nearly 100 popular tourist sites in the United States, and then ranked the 55 most expensive of them. From GOBankingRates.com:
To find the most expensive destinations, GOBankingRates found 55 top vacation locales using data from the U.S. Census American Community Survey and Numbeo’s Cost of Living. This study assumes vacationers are two adults visiting for three nights, having three meals at a mid-range restaurant, 12 meals at inexpensive restaurants, six beers and six sodas. Additional travel factors include each city’s average hotel cost (selected using the average cost of the three cheapest hotels within five miles of each city) and airfare cost (selected using the nearest airport from the destination with available data and double for two).
Key findings
- Florida was the state with the most “most expensive” tourist destinations, with a total of 7. However, none of the cities in question (Clearwater, Fort Lauderdale, Kissimmee, Miami Beach, Naples, Orlando, West Palm Beach) were in the top 10 or even top 20.
- Flying is expensive! Aspen, Anchorage, Fairbanks, Hot Springs, Santa Fe, Taos, and Williamsburg ranked as the destinations with the most expensive airfare costs. Keep saving those frequent flyer miles, y’all!
- Who says beer is always expensive when you’re at a tourist destination? Sure, you’ll pay $8.50 for a brew in Los Angeles, but the same beer is only $3.75 in Branson, MO.
- Know what’s NOT the most expensive tourist destination? New York City. It was only #7. So there.
The top 5
Here are the top 5 most expensive tourist destinations in the country:
For this study, GOBankingRates analyzed the top vacation destinations in the US to find the most expensive vacations. GOBankingRates found 91 cities considered the top vacation destinations sourced from TripAdvisor’s Top Destinations, Travel+Leisure’s 2024 Top US Cities, and U.S. News & World Report’s Best Cities in the U.S. Fifty-five cities qualified for this study as each city had to have data available from the U.S. Census American Community Survey and Numbeo’s Cost of Living. For this study, GOBankingRates is assuming the vacationers are two adults visiting for three nights. They have three meals at a mid-range restaurant, 12 meals at inexpensive restaurants, six beers and six sodas. For each city, GOBankingRates found the average airfare cost from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the average cost of hotels from Hotels.com and the average cost of goods from Numbeo. The airfare was selected using the nearest airport from the vacation destination. The hotels were selected using the average cost of the three cheapest hotels within five miles of each city. The weekend dates of Aug. 7-10, 2025, were selected. All data was collected on and is up to date as of June 4, 2025.
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