When it comes to travel, luxury is very often tied to difficulty of access.
Some of the top earners in the world will pay tens of thousands to reach places like St. Barths, Gstaad, Bora Bora and the Hamptons not because they have anything that can’t be found elsewhere but simply because the prestige lies precisely in their exclusivity.
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While Florida can hardly be classified as a remote destination, the general tendencies also apply to different parts of the state. Looking at average nightly rates both at hotel and short-term rental nighty prices on travel booking platform Kayak, vacation rental company FloridaRentals.com identified the small Florida Keys island of Duck Key as the state’s most expensive vacation destination.
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The island is accessible by Overseas Highway and, at just two miles wide, has a number of high-end resorts; according to the platform’s number-crunching, the average visitor will pay $716 per night — $560 for accommodation in a double-occupancy room (meaning that the average room for a couple will go for double that) but a comparatively very low $45 on meals and $12 on alcohol with some additional costs for transportation and entertainment.
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Destin, which is located in Northern Florida and is the second most expensive destination on the list, has an average nightly accommodation cost of $403 and respective food and drink costs of $51 and $50.
Orlando landed in third place due to the hefty sums that visitors will drop on theme park tickets during their visit — $204 per person per day — while the nightly cost of accommodation is at a relatively low $174 per night.
Due to its remoteness at the southernmost part of the state and also the country, the Florida Keys are generally an expensive place to visit. The other two places to land in the expensive destinations’ top five, Big Pine Key and the city of Key West itself, are also located there.
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When it comes to cheap destinations, the Floridian capital of Tallahassee ranked at the top with an average accommodation cost of $104, $47 for food, $12 for entertainment and $79 for alcohol. While it attracts tens of thousands of visitors for its mangroves, marshes and alligators, Everglades National Park is also still a relatively inexpensive place to visit with an average nightly accommodation cost of $160.
“The park is the largest tropical wilderness in the United States and is the second with the cost of a one-night stay totaling $287 per person,” FloridaRentals wrote of the findings.
The top five was rounded out by Cocoa Beach, Cape Canaveral and Miami. Despite the concentration of luxury hotels and real estate in Miami, the city’s large size means that it is also easier to find low-cost accommodations. The average accommodation cost was recorded at $152 per night.
“Many of the most affordable destinations offer free activities and fun in the form of beaches or historic attractions,” a FloridaRentals spokesperson said of the findings. “Even expensive attractions such as the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral offer free entertainment, with rocket launches being free to watch from public viewing spaces.”
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