Friday, June 28, 2013 | noon
Las Vegas is one of the best places to visit during Fourth of July. Or is it one of the worst?
It all depends on who’s offering their opinion.
Priceline.com's annual Fourth of July destination list names Las Vegas as one of the top five Independence Day destinations. Conversely, cardhub.com, a credit card comparison website, lists the city as one of the worst cities to visit during Fourth of July.
Cardhub.com compared the 30 largest metropolitan areas in the United States and tabulated its results by analyzing factors like Fourth of July popularity, weather forecast and hotel prices. Cardhub ranked Las Vegas at number 19 – solidly in the lower half of its list.
On the other side of the spectrum, travel website priceline.com based its results on more than 30,000 hotel room booking requests made by customers using priceline.com’s hotel reservation service.
Brett Keller, chief marketing officer of priceline.com, said the industry was flooded with editorial opinion about the best travel destinations for this year and said the travel website took a different approach.
"We wanted to take a close look at actual booking intent to see where people are truly packing up for," Keller said in a news release.
Priceline.com, which specifically placed the north area of the Strip at the nation’s No. 5 Fourth of July destination, also included the south area of the Strip (No. 13) and Fremont Street (No. 23) on its list.
Regardless of the rankings, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority spokeswoman Courtney Fitzgerald said Fourth of July was one of the most popular weekends in Las Vegas, with 97 percent hotel occupancy.
"Las Vegas is one of the top destinations for tourists, and we get 40 million visitors every year. It's obviously one of the top places for Fourth of July events," Fitzgerald said.
She noted many events and various fireworks displays would punctuate the holiday and entertain visitors.
"Las Vegas is all things to all people, so no matter what kind of adventure people want to have, Las Vegas can be that for you," Fitzgerald said.
CardHub's top five cities for the Fourth are Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, New York and Minneapolis.
New Orleans, Chicago, New York and San Francisco round out Priceline.com's top 50 destinations for the Fourth of July.
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