Tomorrow is the official start of summer. Millions of Americans will pack their bags over the next three months for a chance at rest, relaxation, and sun. But this year, Americans are booking their vacations later than usual. That means many vacationers still haven’t decided where they’ll be traveling this summer.
To help them choose, BetMGM Casino has put out a list of America’s top “feel-good summer cities in 2025.”
BetMGM explained its methodology this way:
To determine the most feel good summer cities in the U.S., we evaluated 15 of America’s most popular travel destinations across 4 key categories –Sunshine & Temperature, Outdoor Summer Fun, Summer Leisure & Treat, Active & Healthy Living. These combined categories covered an analysis of over 15 metrics that act as the elements to a “feel good summer city”, including number of outdoor dining facilities, nature trails, ice cream stores, dog parks, swimming pools, average summer temperature, feel good music events and more.
Each category includes several metrics, which were scaled on a 0–1 scale using a MinMaxScaler, where 1 represents the most favorable score for a feel good summer city. For multi-metric dimensions, weighted averages were calculated and re-scaled to ensure comparability. Missing data was imputed using the mean of available cities to maintain consistency.
These are America’s best cities for summer travel, according to the rankings:
Los Angeles, California
New York, New York
Chicago, Illinois
San Diego, California
Denver, Colorado
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Miami, Florida
Phoenix, Arizona
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Portland, Oregon
Austin, Texas
Las Vegas, Nevada
Newark, New Jersey
Nashville, Tennessee
Tampa, Florida
Los Angeles ranked #1 for overall summer temperatures. The average is 73.4°F, with 986 hours of sunshine. The city also took the top spot for summer music events and wellness facilities.
Read more about America’s most “feel-good” cities for summer travel here.
List and data were compiled by BetMGM Casino and do not include statistics on all cities.