Even though the summer is still the busiest season for travel and airport crowding, a larger number of people also look to escape to somewhere in the colder months.
While some get sick of the slush and rain in cold cities and are in desperate need of some beach time, others are specifically seeking out a winter wonderland for skiing, snowboarding or simply sitting by a warm fire in a cabin in the way that’s described in countless Christmas songs (but may not necessarily be feasible where one lives.)
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Looking at destinations through the angle of affordability, personal finance platform WalletHub identified Atlanta as the best cold city to visit in the winter — its large size and hub status for the South means that it will be relatively easy to find cheap tickets while one can also expect to find milder winter weather for hopping between attractions like the World of Coca-Cola museum KO and the Beltway green walkway.
You can get a $39 hotel stay in this city over the winter
For those looking for a warm escape, Las Vegas is the top-ranking city. While many of the hotels and attractions there are not necessarily the cheapest, it won out by the combination of easy accessibility and ability to find cheap airline tickets, high number of hotel-flight combinations and ability to find entertainment on The Strip without spending money.
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As major cities, Washington, D.C. and Chicago rounded out the top three of cold destinations while San Diego and Austin made the top three for warm cities to visit in the winter without breaking the bank.
“Among cold destinations, Chicago, Illinois, has the lowest price for a three-star hotel room, $39, which is 3.5 times lower than Worcester, Massachusetts, the city with the highest at $135,” write WalletHub’s authors. “Among warm destinations, San Antonio has the lowest price for a three-star hotel room, $50, which is 3.9 times lower than Honolulu, the city with the highest at $196.”
Chicago also scored highly due to the high number of things to do and restaurants per square foot (6.154833 for the latter) while cites such as Detroit and Louisville in Kentucky won by the lower cost of visiting the cities. Seattle and Boston topped the list when it comes to high expenses.
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In general, those looking for a cheap sunny destination need to look away from places such as Hawaii and popular Florida resorts and toward Texas. Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston all landed in the top ten of cheap sunny destinations alongside North Carolina’s Charleston and, surprisingly, San Francisco amid the exodus and rising crime that the city has been grappling with post-pandemic.
But perhaps more than anything else, the price of one’s vacation can be significantly brought down by a cheap airline ticket. That is why the cities highest on the list are large hubs with a multitude of airlines serving it rather than smaller regional hubs with only a few flights per day.
“The average flight to a popular cold winter destination costs $399.05, lasts three hours and 35 minutes, and has 0.34 connections,” write WalletHub’s authors. “In comparison, the average flight to a popular warm winter destination costs $503.55, lasts 5 hours and 26 minutes, and has 0.58 connections.”
