The One Thing You Have to Do in Every State
The One Thing You Have to Do in Every State
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https://www.fodors.com/world/north-america/usa/experiences/news/photos/the-absolute-best-thing-to-do-in-every-state
The ultimate USA Bucket List.
PART 1
As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, events examining and celebrating our history abound, but we’re focused firmly on the present and on where a traveler should go today to see the absolute best this country has to offer. From national parks and gorgeous beaches to historic trails and iconic landmarks, here is the best of what each of the 50 states (and Washington, D.C.) has to offer.
And for even more of the best to see, do, and eat in each state, be sure to check out our Bucket List USA guidebook, available everywhere books are sold.
Edited by Amanda Sadlowski.
PHOTO: EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE ∕ HUMAN PICTURES
1 OF 51
Montgomery’s Civil Rights History
WHERE: Alabama
Few places in the United States have done a better job of laying out the stakes of the civil rights movement than Montgomery, the city where the movement was born and a place that is still reckoning with its role in the slave trade and the era of slavery that followed. The Legacy Museum explores the Atlantic slave trade and enduring damage wrought by slavery, with exhibits focusing on lynching, racial segregation (“Jim Crow”) laws, and mass incarceration. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice documents and memorializes the thousands of lynchings that occurred since the Civil War through 1950. Finally, the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park honors the resilience and contributions of Black Americans through powerful sculptures and public art.
PHOTO: © STATE OF ALASKA/MATT HAGE
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Denali National Park
WHERE: Alaska
America’s third-largest national park is also Alaska’s most visited attraction, and for good reason. The 6-million-acre park and preserve offers spectacular mountain views, amazing wildlife (including the “Big Five” of Alaska animals: the moose, grizzly bear, wolf, Dall sheep, and caribou), and unforgettable landscapes. The keystone is Denali itself (aka the Great One), whose peak measures in at 20,310 feet. It’s often hidden behind clouds—your odds of viewing it increase the farther you travel along the 92-mile park road. Flightseeing tours are offered from Healy, Talkeetna, and Denali Park; they get you up close to the mountain, and many even include a glacier walk.
PHOTO: ERIK HARRISON/ISTOCK
3 OF 51
Grand Canyon National Park
WHERE: Arizona
It’s the big one, the bucket list topper, and what President Teddy Roosevelt called “the one great sight every American should see.” The Grand Canyon draws millions each year, to river raft, camp, ride a mule, take a ranger-led tour, and see wildlife, but most of all, to be awed at one heck of a canvas Mother Nature has crafted. The statistics—the canyon measures an average width of 10 miles, a length of 277 river miles, and a depth of 1 mile—don’t truly prepare you for that first impression.
PHOTO: ARKANSAS TOURISM
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Hot Springs National Park
WHERE: Arkansas
You haven’t really lived life to the fullest until you’ve soaked in the thermal waters of Hot Springs, melting your muscle aches away with soothing heat. The water here has been reputed to have medicinal properties for thousands of years, when Indigenous peoples came to the springs. Congress created what is now Hot Springs National Park in 1832, setting aside land for the first time as a recreation area. Nine historic bathhouses dating from the early 20th century recall the days when high-society types—and, during Prohibition, gangsters and other shady figures—strolled down these streets.
PHOTO: SAN FRANCISCO TRAVEL ASSOCIATION
5 OF 51
The Golden Gate Bridge
WHERE: California
With its simple but powerful Art Deco design, the 1.7-mile suspension bridge that connects San Francisco to Marin County ranks among the world’s most recognizable man-made structures. Drive or bike across to fulfill all your wildest California dreams, setting aside time to explore the many cool sites on both sides. That includes the 1,400-acre Presidio park and the wild hills of the Marin Headlands, which has several viewing areas with phenomenal skyline vistas.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF VISIT ESTES PARK
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Rocky Mountain National Park
WHERE: Colorado
With more than 350 miles of trails, 30 miles of the Continental Divide, and 77 peaks jutting above 12,000 feet—including Longs Peak, the 14,259-foot flat-top monarch of the Front Range—Rocky Mountain National Park abounds with spectacular adventures for hardcore mountaineers and incredible scenery for nature and wildlife lovers. Hike to high-alpine lakes, picnic in wide-open meadows of wildflowers, or just drive along Trail Ridge Road, viewing the abundant wildlife along the way. The gateway to the park’s East Entrance is charming Estes Park, a quintessential mountain town with an abundance of souvenir shops and eateries.
PHOTO: CONNECTICUT OFFICE OF STATEWIDE MARKETING AND TOURISM
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Mystic Seaport
WHERE: Connecticut
The largest maritime museum in the United States, Mystic Seaport encompasses 19 acres of indoor and outdoor exhibits, and includes a re-created New England coastal village, a working shipyard, and more than 2 million artifacts that provide a fascinating look at the area’s rich shipbuilding and seafaring heritage. In narrow streets and historic homes and buildings, craftspeople give demonstrations of open-hearth cooking, weaving, and other skills. The museum’s more than 500 vessels include the Charles W. Morgan, the last remaining wooden whaling ship afloat (which you can climb aboard to explore).
PHOTO: VISIT DELAWARE
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Rehoboth Beach
WHERE: Delaware
With its mile-long boardwalk featuring family-friendly attractions like the Funland Amusement Park, Rehoboth Beach is a beloved destination for families. It’s also been a gay-friendly getaway for years, drawing members of the LGBTQ+ community from Baltimore and Washington, D.C. The popular Dogfish Head Brewery has a brewpub here, and there are plenty of other food and drink options facing the beach and on nearby streets.
PHOTO: MATT STROSHANE
9 OF 51
Walt Disney World
WHERE: Florida
The beloved characters of Magic Kingdom, the countries of EPCOT, the out-of-this-world Star Wars adventures at Hollywood Studios, and the live animals of Animal Kingdom make Disney World a favorite. A magical evening in Orlando should include fireworks after dinner in Cinderella’s Castle and a ride on Space Mountain, one of the world’s most imaginative roller coasters that takes you on a trip into the depths of outer space—in the dark.
PHOTO: EXPLORE GEORGIA
10 OF 51
Historic Savannah
WHERE: Georgia
Dripping with Southern charm, Savannah beckons with stately architecture, rich history, and a culinary scene that spans from classic down-home cooking to James Beard Award nominees. This is the place to appreciate art in lauded museums, people-watch in flower-filled squares, and imagine the past as you walk under canopies of live oaks draped in Spanish moss in Forsyth Park. The SCAD Museum of Art, an architectural marvel that rose from the ruins of one of the oldest surviving railroad buildings in the United States, covers fashion and African American arts and culture.
Coming to America: Minor Hotels makes major push West
https://hotelsmag.com/news/coming-to-america-minor-hotels-makes-major-push-west/?
by David Eisen
Visit minorhotels.com, click on Destinations toward the top of the page, scroll down, and you come upon a proportional symbol map that denotes the spread of Minor Hotels properties worldwide. There, in Thailand—where Minor keeps its worldwide headquarters, in Bangkok—you’ll find 31 hotels, including six in Phuket, like the Anantara Layan Phuket Resort, where guests can take a Muay Thai class when not lapping in the azure waters of the Andaman Sea. Or, in Italy, where 60 hotels are at a traveler’s disposal, including NH Collection Milano CityLife, which is godlike—literally: The hotel, in the city’s trendy CityLife district, is a converted former 1930s church.
Move the cursor farther west on the map until it lands in the U.S. There, among the 3.5 million square miles of land, is one, solo Minor hotel—the 288-room NH Collection New York Madison Avenue, primely positioned close to the Empire State Building and a Jalen Brunson crossover from Madison Square Garden.
That lone hotel in the U.S.? Not for long; Dillip Rajakarier, CEO of Minor Hotels, makes clear it’s part of a concerted effort by the group to expand its brands throughout the expanses of the Americas.
“The U.S. has always been on our radar,” the Sri Lankan-born Rajakarier said. And it’s not just happenstance: Around 16% of Minor’s inbound business comes from the U.S., visiting its more than 560 hotels worldwide across 12 brands. (As of the end of Q1 2026, Minor had 80 more hotels under committed development, representing more than 11,000 keys.)
Dillip Rajakarier is CEO of Minor Hotels and Group CEO of Minor International. He’s been with the company for 19 years.
GROWTH SPURT
Minor Hotels’ 2018 acquisition of Spain’s NH Hotel Group was transformative. It tripled the size of Minor overnight with the addition of nearly 380 hotels across Europe and Latin America. Doing so opened up its hotels to a traveling population that likely never experienced the brand before. With NH, U.S. travelers were now seven hours from one of its European destinations.
To hear it from Rajakarier, the deal turned Minor from a regional player into a transcontinental force. “It was all about becoming a global company,” he said. (Minor had to fend off Hyatt Hotels Corp., for one, which, though it never made a formal bid, expressed interest in NH Hotels, but ultimately backed off.)
NH Hotels was the Tetris piece Minor was in search of. At the time of the deal, not one NH hotel overlapped with a hotel already in the Minor portfolio. “We were strong in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Australasia; they were strong in Europe and South America,” Rajakarier said. “The whole acquisition was quite accretive in creating a global platform.”
The advance forward is in full swing, propelled, in part, by the launch of new brands. Early 2027 will see the inauguration of The Wolseley Hotels brand in the U.S. with the scheduled opening of the 76-room The Wolseley Hotel New York in Manhattan, a conversion of The Chatwal. The Wolseley’s roots are culinary: The Wolseley is—and remains—a restaurant located in London’s Piccadilly, next to The Ritz London. The New York property will pay homage to its London namesake. The London restaurant was opened in 2003 by British restaurateurs Chris Corbin and Jeremy King. In 2022, Minor Hotels acquired Corbin & King, now rebranded as The Wolseley Hospitality Group and inclusive of other restaurants in the UK, all keeping with a British flair.
The idea behind the brand, Rajakarier shared, is to inject some of that British style into a hotel, yet without forcing it. “It’s highly curated and elegant, and that elegance is built into the rooms, into the facilities, into the services,” he said. “It’s quite important because, otherwise, it becomes a cookie-cutter brand.
Outside New York, one of Minor’s most anticipated debuts is in Miami. In April, Minor announced Anantara Miami Resort & Residences, the luxury brand’s first property in the U.S. The planned 50-story tower will feature 100 private branded residences and 120 resort residences with a slated opening date in 2030. Around the same time as the Miami announcement, Minor unveiled plans for the debut of Anantara again, this time in the Caribbean, with the development of Anantara Turks and Caicos Resort & Residences, scheduled to open in 2029.
A rendering of Anantara Miami Resort & Residences rising above Biscayne Bay. It’s expected to open in 2030.
MINDING THE GAPS
Anantara is stationed at the tip of Minor Hotels’ luxury offerings. The bulk of the hotels are in Thailand, where the brand was started in 2001. It’s now blossomed into more than 50 properties in an array of settings, from beaches to countryside retreats, desert locales and city centers. Consider and contrast Anantara New York Palace in Budapest, along Erzsébet Körút Boulevard, to the jungle setting of Anantara Golden Triangle, where elephants are the backdrop, not Belle Époque architecture.
In 2025, Anantara was ranked number eight by Travel & Leisure in its list of “25 Favorite Hotel Brands,” besting the likes of Belmond and Six Senses. The overwhelming excitement over introducing Anantara on U.S. soil and in the Caribbean is readily evident on the face of Rajakarier, even if his comment is poised in its restraint. “Bringing Anantara into the U.S. now allows more people to connect to the brand,” he said.
It’s been a frenzied past 12 months for Minor Hotels. Launching four new brands will have that effect. Beyond The Wolseley Hotels, Minor introduced two new soft brands—Minor Reserve Collection in the luxury segment and Colbert Collection, a soft brand in the premium segment—along with the select-service brand iStay Hotels.
In May, Porta Rossa Hotel Firenze, Colbert Collection, opened, marking the first hotel to open under the new brand worldwide.
These brand additions have fortified Minor and made it a more cohesive company, according to Rajakarier. The soft brand launches are evidence of owners turning to Minor as a formidable network. “They want distribution; they want logistics—and everything coming through that,” he said.
Growth is paramount for Minor, but unlike most U.S.-based companies, it comes in a more versatile way. While franchising has become customary in the States, favored by the likes of Marriott and Hilton to more speedily add hotels and rooms, Minor deals are more bespoke, a necessity of geography. “Our strategy is asset right and not asset light or asset heavy,” Rajakarier said. “In certain markets, it’s harder going asset light, especially in key locations and with iconic assets.” In countries like Europe, for example, leases remain a popular deal type. (About 65% of Minor’s portfolio is owned and leased.) Rajakarier said that as Minor’s brands gain more recognition, shifting to a more balanced asset strategy, one that embraces franchising, is the logical outcome. Of the group’s extended pipeline opportunities, 87% are asset light, up from 70% last year. The franchise model will be deployed primarily across mature markets and via conversion opportunities, particularly in Europe and the U.S. Five years from now, Rajakarier said, 1,000-plus hotels would not be unexpected.
Minor Hotels is converting a Manhattan hotel into The Wolseley Hotel New York. Pictured here is the exterior rendering; below, the bar. The luxury hotel is slated to open in 2027.
MAN FOR THE JOB
Rajakarier’s tenure with Minor Hotels has been less fluid than the company’s maturation. He joined the company in 2007 as chief finance and investment officer, one year later he was appointed COO, and in 2011 was promoted to CEO. (He is also Group CEO of Minor International, of which Minor Hotels is a subsidiary.) He’s basically been a hospitality lifer, having completed his studies in the UK and taking a position at a young age at what was then the White House Hotel next to Regent’s Park in central London. His passion is not unlike that of others bitten by the hospitality bug. “No two days are the same,” he said.
Minor Hotels had only 12 hotels when Rajakarier joined the company. And while Minor is based in Thailand, it was founded by an American, William Heinecke, in 1978, with the opening of the Royal Garden Resort Pattaya, now the Avani Pattaya Resort. “There is a great sense of achievement in taking an Asian company into one of the top global hotel companies in the world,” Rajakarier said.
Becoming bigger means facing stiffer competition. Minor Hotels has exponentially grown its footprint under Rajakarier, but it is not yet among the largest hotel companies in the world by room count. It’s not always an arms race, but one of the largest drivers of the behemoth lodging companies is their omnipotent loyalty programs, which keep customers within their spheres of travel. It is something Rajakarier understands well. “Loyalty today is a must,” he said.
Avani Palazzo Moscova in Milan’s Porta Nuova district.
Loyalty programs are also expensive to run. In 2007, Minor joined Global Hotel Alliance—a unified loyalty program for independent hotel brands—with its Anantara brand. It has since added more brands and, in 2018, took a 10% stake in GHA as a shareholder. In 2025, Minor coalesced its rewards framework under the single Minor DISCOVERY program linked to the wider GHA network. The biggest plus of GHA, Rajakarier points out, is that, unlike a single-platform program, travelers have an array of different brands and hotels to choose from. “With Hilton Honors, you only stay with Hilton. With IHG Rewards, you only stay with IHG. With us, you have more than 50 different brands,” he said. At the same time, lodging companies are folding in independent brands without changing dollars, such as Yotel’s March tie-in with Hilton that allows it to take advantage of Hilton’s expansive network. As Minor grows, Rajakarier sees a similar partnership path through quasi-marketing alliances. “We are looking to see how we can get hotels to join us,” he said.
Down another, though parallel path, is technology: harnessing it and using it to gain an edge throughout the portfolio of hotels. Here’s the good thing: Rajakarier, prior to his life as a full-blown hotelier, was a programmer back in the eighties. Sure, technology has changed by leaps and bounds, but one thing is certain: Rajakarier is earnest about the space. “In every industry, every company is a tech company, whether they like it or not,” he said. Functions like AI are irreversibly altering how guests travel and their experience; it’s giving back something invaluable and scarce, Rajakarier said: time. “Technology makes for seamless travel,” he said.
In April, Minor put it to the test, unveiling plans to build a new global data and AI platform in partnership with tech heavies Google Cloud and Salesforce. Minor calls it one of the most significant technology investments in its history, and that might be an understatement. It marks a deliberate and determined lean into AI to create a single digital platform connecting global guest data, marketing and service operations. The new platform is set for full deployment this year.
Like most hotel executives, Rajakarier is loath to say that technology will replace humans. Far from it; but unlike mortals, technology doesn’t need sleep, which comes in handy at 3 a.m. when AI recognizes a demand anomaly and can shift rates accordingly. “Human touch is always going to be there still,” Rajakarier said. “That’s what hospitality is about.”
Hoteliers need leadership and investment to use AI to their advantage
Muted supply helps offset increased costs, taxes
A panel hosted by STR in the London offices of CoStar saw an audience of hoteliers hear the latest projections and strategies around AI and how the new tech can enable the industry to better chart its own course. (Terence Baker)
https://www.costar.com/article/1837994709/hotelier-gains-from-disruptive-ai-require-leadership-investment?
Artificial intelligence can provide the space in which hoteliers can excel and have less need for online travel agencies, but getting the correct tech stack and operations landscape requires disciplined leadership and flush wallets, according to sources.
The accessibility of AI likely will increase, and the cost of it likely will decrease, but this particular tech arena for now could still be described as the wild west.
At a panel held on July 1 in the London office of CoStar, Laura Brinkmann, founder of Effizia Strategic Partners, said that in the hotel industry, there is a sense of FOMO — the fear of missing out — around AI, but that does not mean much has been done yet.
“So far, there is not a lot of groundbreaking activity in our dinosaur industry,” she said.
She said AI will disrupt the online travel agencies, but added she wondered if that would equate to cost savings for hoteliers.
“Basically, [AI] is a data-cleaning exercise. … If your data is clean, detailed and accurate, and if you are discoverable, you will no longer have to pay for Google ads, OTA fees … but it takes housekeeping, people, finance and systems.
“If you are discoverable by AI, you own your product.”
She said this is yet one more chance in the industry for hoteliers to own guest preferences.
As guests change, OTAs will be slower than AI in understanding what that change is and what guests’ new booking journeys and stay preferences now entail, Brinkmann said.
“You need a backbone tech stack,” she said. “AI is a new unlock, particularly for independents, that could catapult you to a level of visibility and accessibility that was not previously available. … It is not for free and requires up-front investment … but it opens doors and changes the landscape in the way we know it.
“For now, [AI will] not take [room] payment and manage that process because it doesn’t have the infrastructure. It’s not looking to add that infrastructure in the near term.
But I think, and this is a personal opinion, that is going to come.”
Getting a grip on AI is becoming more important, said Dave Goodger, managing director, Europe, Middle East and Africa at Tourism Economics, because the prize pot is getting larger.
“How much people are spending on travel as a percentage of their income bucket is at a historic high … [but] where they are traveling is changing,” he said.
He added that since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been massive growth in hotel bookings and tourism, which he said has been fueled by events, many of them being concert tours.
“We have talked about the Taylor Swift effect, the Oasis effect. What’s next? The Harry Styles effect, the Bad Bunny effect? I was in Paris a couple of weeks ago, and Celine Dion is going to have a huge impact, and Adele, too,” he said.
Despite these successes, hoteliers are also under pressure from increased operational costs and increased taxes and business rates.
“Hoteliers are more and more commercially aware … looking more now at return, what the risks will be. Everyone is looking for commercially viable assets,” said Jade Humphrey, hotel development sales director at BWH Hotels GB.
Sarah Green, director at Hotel Finance, said the United Kingdom — and many other markets — is a buyers’ market.
She added that banks are lending again.
“Pre-COVID-19, it was about leverage; now it is about location, and if [a hotel is] not on the location list, there is no appetite. In secondary and tertiary markets, there is no demand for midmarket hotels,” she said.
Burdens
Prime locations, and the increased revenue that they can attract, help offset increased taxes, which in the U.K. will soon include in many geographies new roomnights levies, the implications of which have been given to individual city mayors.
Such levies have been instigated in other European markets, notably Amsterdam, which has attempted to curtail new-build hotels and alternative accommodations.
“[A levy] is going to be a tax on top of value-added taxes. It's going to be on top of other costs … so it will be a lot harder for it to be completely absorbed. … Amsterdam is a real outlier, and that’s their strategy. But, generally, across Europe, what you see is that where there is a tourism levy, it’s offset by some reduced VAT. … In the U.K., it’s partly a passing exercise, so it seems, from central government. It is a devolved issue, with local mayors, devolved administrations,” Goodger said.
He added that a 5% tourism levy in the U.K. will see tourism numbers down by about 2%.
“That’s around 12 million nights being taken out of the market. Mostly, it’s going to hit the lower end. That’s where we see the price sensitivity. It is going to hit the domestic travel, regional U.K., which has much more midscale and is much more reliant on domestic travel,” he said.
Aoife Roche, vice president, sales, Europe, Middle East and Africa at STR, said one positive aspect is that supply remains very muted.
She said supply is trending down, at approximately 1% growth.
In Europe, she said, there are 185,000 rooms under construction, representing approximately a 3% rise over the next few years.
“It is skewed to the luxury end of the market, which enjoys the highest effect from [average daily rate],” she added.
She said, however, that “London is a problem.”
“Its pricing power is limited by the absent [or] cautious consumer,” she said, adding that STR’s full-year forecast for the regional U.K. is a 0.1% increase for full-year 2026, a forecast that has been lowered due to the Middle East crisis.
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