The Top US Road Trips: Data-Driven Insights Into Travel Trends and Consumer Behavior

StreetLight analyzes Americans’ long-distance travel—and unpacks how businesses serving tourists can turn granular, precise traffic data into a competitive edge.

Americans famously love their road trips, making nearly 2 billion trips in 2024, according to Road Genius. This vehicle-based travel underpins a large slice of the $2.36T US tourism industry.¹ But for tourist-facing businesses to tap into the sector effectively, they must understand the nuances of common travel patterns. Knowing customers’ typical origins, routes, distance traveled, travel times, and more can help businesses serving tourists better allocate advertising dollars, forecast revenues, optimize resourcing, and make more profitable real estate decisions.  

To understand how road trip activity varies among the biggest metros and what that can reveal for businesses catering to tourists, StreetLight analyzed road trip mobility patterns across the eight biggest metros to uncover where Americans travel most in summer and winter and related insights.  

Maps of the top 10 destinations in summer and winter for each metro are below, followed by a table with complete results. Companies needing deeper insights on traffic trends can use StreetLight’s data to measure activity with more refined spatial and temporal granularity, and across an array of additional metrics, including demographics, directionality, drive train, and more. 

Key Road Trip Insights

East Coast cities change it up in summer and winter. Southern and West Coast cities keep it stable:

• With their varying weather, East Coast cities see a bigger seasonal difference between destinations.
• New York City road trippers have the least overlap in their summer vs. winter destinations.  
• Texas metros and Los Angeles have the most stable road trip destinations across seasons—likely due to favorable year-round driving weather and consistent regional attractions.  

Big city folk road trip away from hustle and bustle. Smaller city residents head towards the action:

• Road trippers from NYC, the highest-population metro in the country, visit lower population destinations on average than those traveling from any of the other metros. 
• Boston and Washington D.C. road trippers, hailing from the smallest of the eight high population metros analyzed, head to destinations with the highest average population.  

Mileage may vary:

• Philadelphians’ top road trip destinations are farther flung on average than any of the other metros, despite being in the middle of popular and clustered northeastern destinations.  
• Houston sees the shortest distance road trips on average at about 200 miles, despite the popular narrative that Texans love the open road. 

Gambling plus the beach is a winning combo:

• The most road trip destination among those studied is Atlantic City which appears six times.

Texans love Austin:

• Austin is the most common destination outside the East Coast, appearing in the top 10 in summer and winter for road trippers from both Houston and Dallas.

Maps & Insights by Metro

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA

• New York City sees the biggest seasonal difference between summer vs. winter destinations.
• Boston and Washington D.C. are the top road trip destinations for New Yorkers in both summer and winter. 
• New Yorkers visit smaller towns overall compared to the other metros, with destinations in the top 10 averaging a population of about 200K.

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA

• Los Angeles sees significant similarity in summer and winter destinations. Eight out of 10 destinations repeat across seasons.
• Popular road trips fall within the 100-350 mile range and are a balance between medium-sized cities and resort towns. 

Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI

• Chicago sees relatively high consistency across seasonal destinations. 
• Chicago’s pattern is mostly regional road trips within a 125–250 mile band, with Nashville standing out as a farther flung favorite. 

Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX

• Dallas has the highest seasonal overlap in destinations among metros: 9 out of 10 destinations are the same in summer and winter. 
• The single summer-only destination is Amarillo and the single winter-only destination is Round Rock.

Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX

• Compared to Dallas, Houston’s destinations extend further and include more Gulf Coast trips. 
• Houston’s top road trips are the shortest compared to the other metros, averaging 200 miles as the crow flies.

Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD

• Like nearby New York, Philadelphia sees a relatively high split between summer and winter destinations.  
• On average, Philadelphians travel farther than road trippers from other metros. Philadelphians travel nearly 500 miles to Myrtle Beach in the summer, which ranks as the longest road trip among any of the top 10 tours identified.  

Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV

• Washingtonians are the most urban-oriented road trippers, with top destinations seeing an average population of 1.29 million, the highest among all the metros.
• Washington ranks second for average road trip distance. 

Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH

• Boston shows strong consistency in destinations by season, especially compared to other East Coast metros. 
• Boston is second only to Washington for the average population size of its most popular destinations.  

See how Virginia measures the impact of seasonal tourism

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Table: The most popular U.S. road trip destinations

Methodology

The analysis uses StreetLight’s tours data to connect long-distance journeys that include stops of 1 km or less, with a maximum of a 4-hour dwell time, and a minimum total trip distance of 100 miles, ending outside of the metro region. 

Want to explore detailed road trip and travel pattern insights for your region or business? Contact StreetLight Data to learn how mobility analytics can support your tourism and transportation strategies. 

Learn one way to measure tourism's impact on your regional travel demand and economics

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