With the cost of everything from groceries to gas going up, you might be thinking of keeping close to home this summer versus hitting the open road to some exotic locale. However, a new analysis by personal finance site, WalletHub, has found that certain cities in South Texas are among the worst in the country for those looking to take a “staycation.”
Laredo, Brownsville and Corpus Christi were all near the bottom in WalletHub’s 2026 ranking of the “Best & Worst Cities for Staycations.” Out of 182 metropolitan areas that the finance site analyzed, Laredo was among the most mediocre, scoring the lowest in Texas, and at No. 177, it’s the sixth-worst in the United States. Brownsville wasn’t too far behind at 133, and Corpus Christi — which was named one of the most boring cities in the country in 2025 — came in at No. 115 on WalletHub’s list.
So just what makes a place a poor option for a staycation? According to WalletHub, it’s a combination of what kinds of recreational opportunities are available, how good the eats and entertainment are, and a metric the site called “rest and relaxation.”
WalletHub graded each city by giving them weighted scores based on those three overarching variables. Analysts used data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Yelp, TripAdvisor, the Council for Community and Economic Research, and a number of other public resources to look into everything from how much it costs to see a movie in a city to what the weather’s like during the summer. WalletHub also looked at what kinds of amenities are nearby, such as parks, museums, festivals, sporting opportunities, and shopping options.
Top-ranked cities, like Orlando, Florida, scored high because “there are so many different things to do in the city.” More than just Disneyworld, Orlando offers several amusement parks, water parks, zoos and arcades, WalletHub financial writer Adam McCann wrote.
By contrast, Laredo scored low across all three metrics, including a 173 out of 182 on the “food and entertainment” score and a 159 on the “rest and relaxation” score. The border city also scored the worst of all cities in terms of the number of public golf courses available per capita. Meanwhile, at 177, Brownsville had one of the worst scores in the third metric — “recreation.”
But there were some bright spots. San Antonio (55), Austin (28) and Houston (26) all scored within the top half among the best cities in the United States for a staycation. Austin and Houston, in particular, ranked among the top 25%. San Antonio and Austin ranked high (14 and 11, respectively) for “food and entertainment,” but their overall ranks were brought down by low scores (119 and 132, respectively) in the “rest and relaxation” category.