If it seems like holiday travel is bad this year, that's because it is. A new study by Forbes Advisor ranked San Antonio as the sixth-worst city when it comes to domestic traveling during the peak winter season.
The good news is that San Antonio is better than its Texas neighbors. Dallas ranked No. 1 and Houston No. 3.
The bad news? San Antonio is pretty bad by their measurement.
Scores in the study were determined by averaging several factors, mostly centered around cost. These include the average price of a nightly hotel stay, the average cost of a renting a car for one day, money spent on daily meals, the average cost of airfare, percentage of cancelled flights, number of annual passengers per gate, hours of traffic annually, the amount of entertainment per person per year, amount of fatal traffic accidents and crime, and the entertainment per person annually.
Combined, these factors give travelers a rough idea of what a stay in the city might look like, though obviously individual experiences will vary wildly from the data.
Factors weighing Alamo City down include the second highest average daily car rental ($58.90, beaten only by San Francisco, California), tying with Dallas for the highest percentage of cancelled flights (24 percent), the second-highest number of passengers per gate (202,407, after Sacramento, California's 208,719), one of the lowest scores for arts and entertainment per 100,000 people, and the second-highest number of fatal car crashes per year.
However, the city ranks well in terms of food and drink per 100,00 people and average cost of a nightly hotel stay ($192.20). San Antonio also has the second-lowest rate of violent crime per 100,000, trailing only Honolulu, Hawaii, albeit distantly.
The numbers for the San Antonio International Airport (SAT) should be taken with a grain of salt. The Forbes Advisor study covers 2022-2024. SAT has had a marked decline in airport traffic since 2024, losing 2.4 percent in a year.
Despite that, SAT is still ranked 13th in overall customer satisfaction by the 2025 J.D. Power survey, showing that while the gates may be busy, travelers don't seem to mind flying in and out of the city. And upcoming improvements, like the $2.5 billion third terminal and an array of new locally owned food options, might make it more attractive yet.
