America’s Best Music Cities Are Worth Planning a Trip Around

4 min read

It’s 11 P.M. on a Tuesday. A single-day general admission ticket to an upcoming music festival that’s selling out quickly is $185. The group chat is split on where to stay. This is the moment most music-trip budgets implode.

Three to four days in host cities like Nashville, Austin, New Orleans, Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles can run anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000-plus per person during big-name festivals, depending on the room and the ticket. Even car camping, which is at the lower end, can cost upwards of $1,300, while a downtown hotel during a crowded music weekend lives at the top of that range. The difference between the floor and the ceiling isn’t the destination; it’s whether you treat the trip like a series of decisions or a series of bills.

To maximize your budget, plan to spend on what you came for and stop hemorrhaging on what you didn’t. Here’s how.

Don’t Spend More Than You Need to on Tickets

Here’s what no one says out loud: Lodging is going to be the biggest line on your music-trip budget, full stop. Plan as if the hotel is half the trip—because for most people it is. Free up room in your lodging budget by purchasing your music festival tickets smartly. First, buy online and buy early. Tickets often are cheaper if you buy them in advance than if you try to get them at the door — call it a procrastinator’s tax. Next, consider buying day passes instead of tickets for the whole weekend. For some festivals, this can shrink your spend by nearly a third, so choose your favorite lineup and save accordingly. Other festivals may reward you for going on a school night, with Thursday tickets costing $20-$30 less than Saturday, and sometimes even have the same headliners.

Take Advantage of Free Music

Nashville’s Lower Broadway has live music in every honky-tonk from 10 A.M. to 3 A.M., no cover. Frenchmen Street in New Orleans hosts three or four free shows a night and many New Orleans jazz rooms rely on a tip jar instead of a door fee. Other cities run the same play: Austin, Chicago, and Brooklyn all program free shows worth showing up early for.

Pick a Hotel That Does the Work for You

A music festival in town will likely drive up the price of lodging—Chicago hotels near Grant Park peaked at just over $300 a night on the busiest festival days in 2025, with weekly rates averaging $256—42 percent above the city’s annual average. Meanwhile, parking in Nashville, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles can exceed $30 a night, and rideshares are known to surge two to five times normal pricing on big-music weekends. But choosing a walkable downtown hotel erases both needs. Prioritize reserving a room three to five months ahead, which means you’ll likely book the hotel first, the ticket second, and the flight third.

Choice Hotels® fit the bill across six cities. Cambria® Hotel Nashville Downtown sits one block from Lower Broadway with a heated saltwater rooftop pool and the True Music Room & Bar on the fifth floor. Experience live music nightly, then walk back to your room, no surge multiplier required. St Charles Coach House, an Ascend Collection® Hotel in New Orleans provides easy trolley access to the city’s jazz clubs. Cambria® Hotel Austin Downtown anchors Rainey Street with the only rooftop overlooking it, plus live music Thursday through Saturday at the Limestone bar.

Outside of the South, the Cambria Hotel New York – Chelsea puts you a 10-minute walk from 34th Street, Radisson Blu® Aqua Hotel, Chicago sits steps from Chicago’s most popular theaters, and BLVD Hotel and Studios Universal-Hollywood, an Ascend Collection Hotel, gets you Metro-close to iconic venues in Downtown LA and Hollywood. Each of the three brands brings a unique feel to your stay: Cambria for design-led nights out, Radisson Blu® for the full-service treatment with a bar downstairs and Sunday breakfast in bed, and Ascend Collection™ for the boutique stamp on a one-of-a-kind room.

Read the Fine Print Before It Reads You

Ticketing platforms can layer 25 percent to 30 percent in fees on top of face value, meaning that the $185 day pass is closer to $235 with taxes and “convenience” fees. Choice Hotel’s Cambria and Ascend Collection properties typically list parking, resort fees, and amenity charges upfront on the booking page—so read the line items to avoid surprises at checkout. Leave a cushion in your budget and accept that receipts may go over what you expect.

When you travel for the music, everything else is overhead—so walk to the venue, eat before you get there, and stop paying for things you didn’t fly in for. Your future self will write a thank-you note from the rooftop pool.

Start planning your trip at choicehotels.com.