Cha-Ching!
San Antonio flies away with top spot on Money's Best Places to Go in 2019
The Tricentennial has come and gone, but San Antonio is still among travelers' must-hit vacation spots. On March 4, Money magazine released its fourth annual list of the Best Places to Go in 2019, and San Antonio took a top spot.
In order to create the list, Money says it ditched favoritism for cold, hard numbers. The editors took 43,000 data points to analyze 750 of the most popular vacation destinations across the world. Money then broke those results into 10 best U.S. destinations and 10 best international spots.
According to their methodology, Money editors looked at everything from airline costs and airport ratings to museum quality and bars per capita. "Our winners, distributed around the globe, are full of activities and amenities that make vacations memorable — at price points that make them relatively affordable," the magazine says.
Coming in at No. 5, Alamo City is lauded for its particularly rich history (300 years and counting), especially the city's largest concentration of Spanish colonial missions on the continent.
"But there’s more to do than view architecture and battle sites," Money says. Indeed, with more than 3,000 restaurants, the magazine points to San Antonio's reputation as a culinary hot spot and recent UNESCO designation as a Creative City of Gastronomy.
Since it is dedicated to all things finance, Money also notes San Antonio's overall affordability, relatively low hotel costs, and three-course meals averaging just $35 — among the lowest on the list.
Rounding out the top five in the U.S. are Jekyll Island, Georgia (No. 1); Ponce Inlet, Florida (No. 2); Las Cruces, New Mexico (No. 3); and Stowe, Vermont (No. 4). Coming in behind San Antonio is Sag Harbor, New York (No. 6); Los Angeles (No. 7); Cincinnati (No. 8); St. George, Utah (No. 9); and Mystic, Connecticut (No. 10).
Internationally, Meknes, Morocco; Cozumel, Mexico; Havana, Cuba; Montreal; and Nanjing, China took the top five spots.
