If you want a welcoming stay in the USA, then you can draw on the experience of more than a million visitors who rated the top 10 five-star cities.
And surprisingly, none of the locations are the big name venues on the usual tourist trail.
Top of the list is Tampa, Florida, according to travel web site Airbnb.
The ratings come from visitors who have stayed at bed-and-breakfast accommodation all over the USA.
Each visit was ranked with a point score out of five in several categories, like cleanliness, hospitality, and truthfulness about room standards.
USA top places to stay
Genuine Southern hospitality seems to rank best with half the best-ranked cities.
The top 10 cities with visitors were:
- Tampa, FL
- Mendocino, CA
- Eugene, OR
- Bend, OR
- Raleigh, NC
- Memphis, TN
- Madison, WI
- Nashville, TN
- Tucson, AZ
- Lake Tahoe, CA
Hosts in North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee came out on top for making their guests feel part of the family.
Many offered home-baked meals, treated them to tea and ushered guests around their cities to show off their civic pride.
Hosts were also laid back in California and Oregon on the West Coast.
Popular extras were cycles to explore the city and European-style continental breakfasts.
The other top cities are all located near universities, where the hosts tended to hark back to their student days and were more ready to share their homes with guests.
Other cities that pulled in high ratings included Sedona, AZ, and Santa Fe, New Mexico – reflecting that Southern comfort again.
More hospitable
One surprise is that bed-and-breakfast is not such a popular accommodation option with Americans as Europeans, so it’s likely many of the visitors rating their stays were from outside the States. Airbnb does not reveal this stat in their methodology.
They do, however, explain that most of the guests were aged between 25 years old and 39 years old, although those aged 40 to 69 were not far behind.
Perhaps many of the hosts tend to be more hospitable because they are predominantly aged over 40, and mostly over 50, so they have the inclination to spend time with guests in their homes.
“We also noticed that the further a guest books in advance, the better they rate their trip,” said an Airbnb spokesman.
“That maybe because they can choose better accommodation or they had a clearer picture of the host and type of trip they wanted.”
