Just because a city can be reached via cheap airplane tickets or cheap vacation packages or even offers discount hotel rooms does not necessarily mean that a visit to such a city will be affordable. Other factors also need to be taken into account.
Travel & Leisure readers have ranked 35 cities regarding prices on everything from fine dining to street food, and luxury shopping to flea markets.
Factors that make a city a great value include reasonably priced hotels and restaurants, as well as things such as budget friendly theater tickets, free museums and low gas prices. The surveys winner was Kansas City, whose average hotel room rate is around $100 and came in tops for offering cheap, delicious barbecue.
Another attribute of Kansas City was its airport which offers relatively cheap airfares as does another city ranked in the top five: San Juan in Puerto Rico. This island city has the countrys highest rated street food and is well known for walkable streets in Old San Juan.
Cities are viewed as more affordable when they can be explored by foot. Even though Dallas/Fort Worth offers reasonably priced hotels, it scored poorly for overall affordability in part because it ranked last as a pedestrian friendly city.
Costs such as taxi rides and cover charges add up over the span of a trip and turn some travelers sour on individual cities or venues. Travelers are starting to view hotels that charge for Wi-Fi as silly as an establishment would be if it charged for hot water.
The five most affordable cities were Kansas City, MO, Salt Lake City, Nashville, San Juan, P.R., and San Antonio, TX. Five of the more expensive cities (ranked 16 through 20) were Denver, Las Vegas, Baltimore, Charleston, SC, and Phoenix/Scottsdale.
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