Just in time for spring break and summer vacations, MONEY ranks Las Cruces third in the United States as a place to visit in 2019.
Our community’s overall efforts to market Las Cruces as a travel destination are paying off. City government, our partners in the hospitality industry, Visit Las Cruces, the City’s Economic Development Department and others are successfully working together to put Las Cruces on the national and world map. We continue to attract the attention of the travel community and we whole-heartedly welcome guests to our beautiful city.
MONEY specifically cites as attractions the City’s Museum of Nature & Science and the Branigan Cultural Center.
“Populated by single-story adobe-style buildings and mission-inspired
architecture, Las Cruces’ city center is home to a biweekly market with
local food, crafts, and music,” states MONEY. They also named Hotel
Encanto de Las Cruces as the best place to stay while visiting Las Cruces.
MONEY analyzed 43,706 data points for almost 750 of the most popular vacation spots: roughly 300 in the U.S. and 450 around the world.
ACCORDING TO THE REPORT: To rank each place, MONEY gave the most weight to overall cost – including average roundtrip flight prices and hotel prices provided by Kayak and vacation rental costs from AirDNA. MONEY also calculated what travelers should expect to spend on meals, beverages, and local transport, with pricing from Numbeo. For U.S. destinations, with the help of Hipmunk and Witlytic, rental car prices from the nearest airport were factored.
To ensure that MONEY’s picks are a good value right now, yearover-year price changes in average airfares and hotel prices were also considered. For international destinations, we used XE.com to analyze exchange rate fluctuations over the past year.
Things to do also factored into scoring. MONEY looked at the number of museums, parks, campgrounds, orchestras, historic landmarks and attractions, beaches, restaurants, bars, hotels, and more. TripAdvisor was used for international destinations, and data provided by Witlytic on the number and average rating of things to do in domestic destinations. Also considered were the number of highly rated restaurants, amusement parks, bars, campsites, museums, parks, zoos, beaches, and other points of interest in an area, provided by Yelp.
Read the full MONEY report here.