Every January since we started the road trip I’ve published a post sharing lots of different info and stats relating to our travel from the previous year; that includes both our 50 state road trip and overseas travel.
For reference, here are our posts for previous years:
Here’s a roundup of all our stats for 2024 – the final year of our 7 year, 50 state road trip.
Miles Driven
We started 2024 with 211,751 miles on our car’s odometer. At the end of the year we were at 238,079 miles which means we drove 26,328 miles in 2024. That’s the second highest number of miles we’ve driven in a year on the road trip. It was so high because we started the year on the east coast, crossed over to the west coast. drove up through Canada to Alaska in the summer and back again, then visited Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming and Nevada before the year was out.
In reality, we drove even more miles than that. That’s because we left our car in Denver, CO while in Hawaii for four weeks. While there we rented a car on each of the four islands, but we didn’t track how many miles we drove during that time and so that mileage isn’t accounted for in the year’s total.
For comparison, here’s our mileage from previous years:
- 2023 – 19,821
- 2022 – 21,469
- 2021 – 20,059
- 2020 – 18,375
- 2019 – 25,006
- 2018 – 27,643
Number Of Countries Visited
Shae and I have different numbers for 2024 because I went abroad without her for the Frequent Miler Million Mile Madness challenge, although she went to South Africa for the first Ignite Travel Tours trip. Shae went to five countries, while I went to nine.
Shae
- Canada
- UK
- Maldives
- Singapore
- South Africa
Stephen
- Canada
- UK
- Maldives
- Singapore
- Denmark
- Spain
- France
- Romania
- Vietnam
I also flew through several other countries, but didn’t leave the airport and so those don’t really count. Those countries were Netherlands, Greece, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, South Korea, China, Thailand and Taiwan.
Number Of Cities Stayed In (Officially)
We have slightly different numbers again for this due to my extra international travel. Shae stayed in 64 cities, while I stayed in 67.
Number Of Cities Stayed In (Unofficially)
78 for Shae and 81 for me. This total is higher than the previous numbers as it includes cities we stayed in a night or two while moving from one place to another, but where we didn’t do anything there.
Number Of States Visited (Officially)
11 – Florida, West Virginia, Indiana, Idaho, Washington, Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Nevada and Hawaii.
West Virginia is a little different as we’d officially visited there in 2019. However, we spent a couple of weeks there in February to check out a few places we were considering moving to after the road trip was over and saw different stuff, so that felt like another official visit there.
Number Of States Visited (Unofficially)
23. The other 12 states were ones where we stayed a night or two in on our way through to states that we were visiting officially.
Number Of Hotel Brands Stayed At
32. That’s a 33% increase on the previous year and included some new-to-us brands like Conrad, Avid, Hilton’s Tapestry collection and more. We also stayed at far more independent properties in 2024 than previous years; a lot of those came about as a result of us staying in random places on our drives up to Alaska and back again.
Here’s a list of how many nights we spent at each brand:
Number Of Nights In Airbnbs & Vacasa Properties
74 nights in Airbnb properties and 35 in Vacasa properties. That was a reduction in Airbnb stays compared to 2023, but an almost doubling of the number of nights in Vacasa properties we stayed at that previous year. I’d predicted in last year’s roundup stats post that we’d likely end up with 100+ nights at Airbnbs and Vacasa rentals and that ended up coming true.
Average Accommodation Cost
$31.73 per night which was the second lowest amount of the entire road trip. We managed to keep that cost so low because we ended up booking so many stays with points; seeing as it was our last year on the road trip, I wasn’t as worried about trying to maintain high hotel points balances. Despite that, we still ended 2024 with ~2 million hotel points across various programs.
For comparison, here’s our average accommodation spend in previous years:
- 2023 – $47.90
- 2022 – $43.52
- 2021 – $38.77
- 2020 – $42.67
- 2019 – $24.79
- 2018 – $38.84
Paid Nights Vs. Award Nights
We paid cash for 101 nights in 2024 and used points or free night certificates for a whopping 244 nights. That doesn’t add up to 365 because I’ve only included hotels and Airbnbs we stayed at on the road trip, not the hotels we stayed at while overseas or when we stayed with family and friends.
Hotel Points Earned
In case you’re wondering how we earn so many hotel points, check out this post as it’s not just from the fact that we have so many hotel stays. In addition to those methods, in some cases we’ll book a stay, cancel it and then rebook a different stay. The points we get back from cancelling the stay get accounted for in our earnings, as do both sets of redemption transactions, so in those instances we’re effectively double counting. That doesn’t happen too often though and it would be a lot of work to go through to try and work out when that had happened, so the figures below do include those quirks.
- IHG One Rewards – 333,921
- Hilton Honors – 1,685,850
- Marriott Bonvoy – 752,033
- World of Hyatt – 1,246,122
- Choice Privileges – 16,800
- Wyndham Rewards – 701,033
- Hotels.com OneKey – $28.35
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 990,812
- Capital One – 122,614
- Citi ThankYou – 21,323
Hotel Points Redeemed
In a number of cases here, you might notice that we redeemed more points than we earned in 2024. That’s because we already had a healthy balance of hotel points coming in to 2024, so it’s not like we’re overdrawn on our points balances.
- IHG One Rewards – 317,760
- Hilton Honors – 1,616,612
- Marriott Bonvoy – 816,500
- World of Hyatt – 1,192,500
- Choice Privileges – 204,000
- Wyndham Rewards – 783,000
- Hotels.com OneKey – $25.26
- Chase Ultimate Rewards – 765,000
- Capital One – 64,000
- Citi ThankYou – 4,000
Total Pet Fees
We were due to pay $4,121 in pet fees at hotels in 2024. We were fortunate that quite a few properties didn’t end up charging the fee as what we actually paid was $2,902.41. That’s still a painfully high amount, but certainly not as bad as it could’ve been.
Hotel Status Levels
Seeing as 2024 was the last year that we’d be living in hotels for the entire time, it was also the last time – in theory – that we’d find it pretty easy to earn high status levels in their various loyalty programs. However, a lot of hotel chains provide the opportunity to earn high status through their credit cards, so that’ll be an option in some cases going forward.
In 2024 I managed to secure lifetime Platinum status with Marriott. That required 600 qualifying nights over my time as a loyalty program member and 10 or more years of Platinum status. Thanks to the way things worked when Marriott bought SPG and the fact that elite night credits from holding their credit cards count, I hit both 600+ nights and 10 years of Platinum status last year. Platinum status with Marriott provides lounge access, complimentary breakfast at most of their brands, room upgrades and more, so it’s nice that I’ll have that for the rest of my life (provided they don’t change Platinum benefits in the future).
Here are the other elite status levels I earned in 2024 and how I earned them:
Average Daily Spend
We spent $43,944.49 in 2024, but we’d budgeted for $42,625 due to spending some of the year overseas. That means we overspent by $1,319.49, or less than $4 per day too much. Considering we visited expensive states like Alaska and Hawaii last year, that wasn’t a bad overall result.
Number Of Blog Posts Published
We published 113 blog posts in 2024. That wasn’t as many as we’d published in some previous years, but the year was extremely busy and so that gave us less time to publish posts.
Total Page Views
We had 120,016 pageviews in 2024 which was a dramatic drop compared to previous years. Google changed its search algorithm last year which seemed to have a particularly negative impact on travel blogs. We were clearly caught up in that, but not as badly as some other sites it seems.
Question
Are there any other numbers you’re curious about from our final year of our road trip? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll try to provide them 🙂
Thanks for all the great info you have put out over the trip.
With staying in motels the bulk of the time do you get tired of eating out as opposed to home cooking?
You guys had the ultimate road trip! Hope things improve in the future so you are able to return.
Take care!
When possible, we stay at extended stay hotel brands like Residence Inn, Candlewood Suites, etc. as those have a kitchen which makes life much easier. We also have a portable kitchen (see this post https://nohomejustroam.com/portable-kitchen-road-trip/ ) which enables us to make meals in regular hotel rooms, although I’ve been a bit lazy with that the last couple of years.
We don’t end up eating out a ton, plus we usually place to-go orders rather than actually eating in a restaurant.