How A Texas City Made One Of Travel + Leisure’s Most Exclusive Lists

San Antonio, Texas, came in at number 10 on Travel + Leisure’s 2023 favorite cities category of the “World’s Best Awards” survey.

The vibrant city of San Antonio secured a spot in the top ten for the following reasons:

“San Antonio’s colorful, picturesque architecture is a nod to its past, while contemporary hotels and restaurants keep the south Texas city looking toward the future. A hotspot for history buffs, foodies, and families, a perfect day in San Antonio includes an afternoon stroll along the Museum Reach, a 3.5-mile-long park on both banks of the San Antonio River that’s filled with walking paths and public art installations.”

The list is compiled by the esteemed travel publication every year with the help of responses collected from dedicated readers. The purpose of the review is to examine all of the information about individual travel experiences, then factor in satisfaction with established hotels, resorts, cities, islands, cruise ships, spas and airlines, to name a few categories, in order to determine overall rankings on the following criteria:

• Sights/landmarks
• Culture
• Food
• Friendliness
• Shopping
• Value

Participants were able to select from a variety of ratings, which included “excellent,” “above average,” “average,” “below average” or “poor.”

Due to its ever-evolving culture that still manages to preserve remnants of its fascinating history, San Antonio’s reader score was an impressive 82.57.

In 2023, approximately 165,000 Travel + Leisure enthusiasts partook in the survey. That figure is significant as the travel magazine witnessed an increase in the number of respondents — approximately 25 percent more compared to pre-Covid levels. All together, over 685,000 votes were cast to sound off on 8,500 distinct properties from hotels, to cities, to cruise lines.