U.S. Travelers Think These Cities Should Be Avoided ‘At All Costs’
The safety—or should we say, the perceived safety—of major U.S. cities has become a politicized issue for many Americans who get most of their information from sensationalized media coverage. Yet, it’s always interesting to see which cities travelers avoid or gravitate to.
As such, the travel-based website The Vacationer surveyed over 1,000 Americans over the age of 18 to see where people say they would “avoid traveling to at all costs.” To put together the poll, which was conducted by SurveyMonkey, 34 cities were selected based on a combination of population size and visitor popularity for a sampling of major U.S. cities across the country.
Respondents were asked to select as many cities as they wished, and alternately, could choose “none of these” if there were no cities they would avoid.
However, it should also be noted that respondents were not given any specific criteria in which cities they would avoid. So, the rationale behind the responses could be chalked up to anything from safety to the climate of a particular city.
Having said that, Detroit came in first, with more than 22 percent of respondents saying that they would avoid the midwestern city at all costs—despite the fact that there are actually a number of good reasons to visit. Close behind Detroit was Chicago in second place, with 21.71 respondents saying they would avoid traveling to the Windy City at all costs, followed by Atlanta in third.
The city that there least number of people say they would avoid is Honolulu, HI, with less than five percent of respondents. Likewise, 26.62 percent said that they had no reason to avoid any of the cities on the list.
You can see the top 20 most “avoidable” cities below, or head over to The Vacationer for the complete list.
- Detroit, MI: 22.50 percent
- Chicago, IL: 21.71 percent
- Atlanta, GA: 18.47 percent
- New York City, NY: 18.07 percent
- Baltimore, MD: 17.39 percent
- Anaheim, CA: 17.19 percent
- San Francisco, CA: 15.62 percent
- Austin, TX: 15.42 percent
- Miami, FL: 14.83 percent
- Dallas, TX: 14.34 percent
- Jacksonville, FL: 14.34 percent
- Los Angeles, CA: 14.15 percent
- Houston, TX: 13.16 percent
- San Jose, CA: 11.69 percent
- Sacramento, CA: 11.49 percent
- Tampa, FL: 11.39 percent
- Las Vegas, NV: 11.20 percent
- Portland, OR: 10.81 percent
- Philadelphia, PA: 10.61 percent
- Washington, D.C.: 10.61 percent
