America’s Favorite Cities
By urbanhoustonian at October 19, 2009 | 7:00 AM | Print
Travel + Leisure Magazine recently announced the results of its annual America’s Favorite Cities survey. America’s Favorite Cities is an annual survey where T+L chooses 30 U.S. cities, and has readers rank them based on number of various characteristics in 10 categories (People, Type of Trip, Hotels, Nightlife, Culture, Shopping, Food/Dining, Quality of Life/Visitor Experience, Airports and Holiday Travel. Houston (finally) made its debut on the 2009 list. Given the success of our debut, you have to wonder what took Travel + Leisure to include us on the list. I’m going to go over a couple of the most interesting results, but invite you to peruse all of the lists yourself.
People
One of Houston’s greatest assets is its people. Among the 30 cities in America’s Favorite Cities, Houston’s people ranked 3rd overall behind Austin and San Francisco. The sub-categories (Houston’s overall ranking in parentheses) in People are Attractive (8), Friendly (7), Intelligent (13), Athletic/Active (15), Diverse (4) and Stylish (6).
From Travel + Leisure
“Barreling in at #8 in attractiveness, Houston’s enthusiastic debut in America’s Favorite Cities has stirred up a lot of the top categories. The nation’s fourth largest city wins the #1 position for affordable hotels and ranks in the top 10 for theater, classical music, and museums and galleries.”
For the most part, these numbers make sense. What I find most interesting here is how these rankings translated into our third place overall finish in the People category. I wonder what our ranking would have been had we received a more respectable (and accurate) grade in the Intelligence and Athletic/Active categories. I’ll weigh our friends at Rice, the Texas Medical Center and in the energy industry against the brightest minds of any city anytime. In terms of our Athletic/Active ranking, I still have yet to buy into or seen proven, the idea that our sprawl directly correlates to a sedentary lifestyle.
Hotels
Another #3 ranking definitely shocked me here. It’s not that I don’t like our hotels. It’s just that I just don’t picture Houston Hotels when I’m reading travel magazines. For our part, Houston ranked #2 in Business hotels and #1 in affordable hotels. In the grand scheme of things, it’s unfair to the other cities in the country to rank the affordability of a hotel stay in Houston. We simply kick ass in that category. We scored a pair of 8′s in the categories of Big-name Luxury Hotels and Stylish boutique hotels. This is a category I see us becoming more competitive in once BLVD Place gets it’s major hotel plugged in. I’ve heard it’s going to be a Ritz-Carlton, but I’ve also not heard anything about it lately either.
Culture
This proved to be the most thrilling of results for me.We ranked 7th overall in the Culture Category, but it was our sub-category results that had me beaming. We had Top Ten finishes in Classical Music (5), Theater (5) and Museums/Galleries (8). Not surprisingly we got beat up in the last Culture Sub-category, Historical sites/monuments (18). Still, considering this is Houston’s debut on this list, I couldn’t be happier. I’m also going to go ahead and question the notion that historical sites and monuments are necessarily a good barometer of culture. For instance, what U.S. city can compete with Washington D.C. (#1 in Historical sites/Monuments, #2 Culture), with their collection of memorials? But does that mean Washington has more culture? I don’t think so. Of course, I don’t know what other category you’d put Historical sites in, I’m only questioning whether is shouldn’t be weighted differently.
Food/Dining
This is another category where I believe Houston will eventually having the opportunity to soar higher than its debut of #12. While we got decent rankings in Big Name Restaurants (6) and Ethnic Food (8), we got robbed (in my humble opinion) in Cafes/Coffee Bars (13), Farmers Markets (19) and Neighborhood Joints (19). If there was one category that Houston did not get a fair shake, it was Food/Dining. For one, I’d put us in the Top 5 for Ethnic Food. Houston is one of the most diverse cities in the country, and our food is reflective of that. As for our other rankings. Well, my dear readers, it’s your responsibility to take visitors to our cafes and neighborhood joints more! We need to get that reputation fixed!
Airports
Certainly not the most glamorous category, but Houston did ring up #1 ranking here. The only thing I want to say here is congratulations to the people responsible for developing a successful plan for making Houston’s airports better.
Houston vs. Dallas, FIGHT!
So the folks at Travel + Leisure include a nice little feature called City Face-Off. It gives you the opportunity to compare any two of America’s Favorite Cities in the ten categories. I’ll let you play with it as you will, but I had to take a moment to compare the results of Houston vs. Dallas. Regardless of which category you pick, this is the ultimate result.
Dallas fared miserably in this year’s America’s Favorite Cities. Their highest rating was for Luxury Stores (10), which was still behind Houston (5). They ranked in the bottom third of cities in most of the sub-categories. Frankly I was surprised by their results. Of the four Texas cities in this year’s America’s Favorite Cities, Dallas is a distant fourth. Of course it is still important to point out Dallas, by being included in America’s Favorite Cities, is considered to be one of the best 30 cities in the country.
Who really cares if they’re 30? Not me, no, not at all.
