Special Report

These Are America's Safest Cities for Tourists

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: June 4, 2019 12:30 pm

Last Updated: January 6, 2020 4:05 am

Picking spots to visit in a foreign country is a matter of local attractions, climate, cost of travel, and often restaurants and hotels. The U.S. keeps a list of countries it is not safe for Americans to visit. Similarly, some tourists who come to the United States are likely to consider their own safety.

24/7 Wall St. has put together a list of the safest cities for tourists to visit. By its nature, any analysis of this kind yields the safest cities for anyone to visit, but tourists want to know about amenities like hotels and restaurants, so our analysis covers those factors as well. At the outset, overseas visitors should know that the United States is one of the most tourist-friendly countries in the world.

To provide a guide for tourists who come to America and want to visit the country’s safest cities, we reviewed violent crime levels per 100,000 people, the number of hotels and the number of restaurants.

Tourism is a mammoth business in the United States, and some states and cities rely on it for much of their gross domestic product and a large portion of their workforces. A report by the World Tourism Organization shows that, in 2017, tourist spent more in the United States than any other nation: about $211 billion. Spain and France are next on the list by the same measurement, but their revenue is less than half of the U.S. figure

At the local level, tourism revenue is concentrated in several states. The Council of State Governments research shows the figures are $128.9 billion in California and $90.9 billion in Florida.

Tourism is even more concentrated at the local level. The top tourist destination in the United States is the Grand Canyon. That is followed by Manhattan, Yellowstone National Park, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and Niagara Falls. Obviously, visitors to the Grand Canyon are a more important source of revenue than is the case for Manhattan. The Grant Canyon and some of the other attractions that are of high importance to their state rank as some of the most beautiful attractions in the U.S.