Sure, with local tourism breaking records in 2013 maybe we shouldn't be too concerned with what some random list says. Yet the fact that TripAdvisor says places like Branson, Missouri, and Phoenix, Arizona, are better travel destinations than Miami Beach just doesn't sit well with us.
The travel planning website unveiled the 2014 edition of its annual top U.S. destinations today, and Miami Beach plummeted 13 spots from last year. It just barely made the list by placing all the way down at 25th.
Miami Beach had the biggest fall off of any city from last year's top 25.
The rankings come from user's rankings of hotels, attractions, and restaurants in each city over a 12-month period.
So which towns are apparently better than us?
New York is first (OK, sure, yes), Chicago is second (but it's so cold there!) and San Francisco is third (Americans love to observe gentrifying techies in their native environment, apparently). But it's the cities further down on the list that really embarrass us.
Phoenix is 21st. Yes, the biggest city in the only state that is arguably crazier than Florida ... and in a much darker way. Branson, the depressing entertainment capital of the Midwest, was 19th. Boston, a place where ideas of fun vary wildly from getting drunk and smashing cars to post-modernist poetry readings, was 14th.
Of course, because these rankings are based of service industry reviews, maybe we could get together and agree to be a bit nicer and more attentive to tourists ... but that isn't going to happen. With 14.2 million people visiting Miami and the Beaches last year, we don't have that much to worry about.
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