USA

USA Multi-Centre Holidays: Tailor-Made Journeys Across America

A USA multi-centre holiday combines two or more American destinations in a single tailor-made journey, pairing cities, national parks, coastlines and beach stays that would each justify a holiday in their own right. No country rewards the approach quite like the United States. Travelling between American states is the closest thing there is to travelling between European countries: the landscapes, food, music and way of life change completely from one region to the next, yet you never change currency, language or SIM card.

Our USA specialist, Georgia Wiseman, our Product Manager, puts it bluntly: “If you’ve done Orlando, New York and Vegas, I would say you haven’t done the States.” Beyond the obvious icons lies a country with deserts and rainforests, 300-year-old cities and week-old food trends, mountain ranges older than the Atlantic and beaches most British travellers have never heard of. A well-built multi-centre itinerary is how you reach it.

Why the USA is the ultimate multi-centre destination

Scale and variety. California alone holds coastline, desert and giant sequoia forest within a single state; Oregon, surprisingly, does much the same. Each state has its own government, its own accent, its own food and its own rhythm, which is why our specialists plan the USA the way others plan a multi-country European trip: state by state, not city by city.

There is depth here that surprises people, too. New Orleans has stood for more than 300 years, which makes it older than the United States itself, a fact you feel in every ironwork balcony of the French Quarter. And there is contrast on a scale Europe simply cannot offer: within 50 miles of Yosemite’s waterfalls you can be in genuine desert heat on the road to Las Vegas.

The USA routes we build most often

Music Cities of the South: Nashville, Memphis and New Orleans

Our signature American journey, and consistently our most requested. Fly direct from the UK into Nashville for the honky-tonks and the Country Music Hall of Fame, travel by luxury coach to Memphis for Elvis, Beale Street and barbecue, then take the train south to New Orleans for jazz, Creole cooking and the French Quarter. Country music is booming in the UK, and August 2027 marks 50 years since Elvis’s death, so Memphis will only get bigger. The South also remains conspicuously better value than New York or Las Vegas, while delivering just as much bucket-list weight.

The route recently gained a spectacular final act. Since Amtrak’s Mardi Gras Service launched in 2025, the white-sand Gulf Coast beaches of Mississippi sit under two hours by train from New Orleans, with fares from just a few dollars. We now build the itinerary in reverse, finishing with a beach stay in Biloxi: casinos, shrimping trips, seriously good restaurants and the same sweep of Gulf sand as Florida, at a fraction of the crowds. Within three months of adding it, this became our most popular USA package.

The West Coast fly-drive: San Francisco to San Diego

The romanticised American road trip, and it earns the reputation. Most operators run San Francisco to Los Angeles; we recommend continuing to San Diego, because it is the same magnificent coast and only a few hours more. En route: Monterey for whale watching that runs all year round, storybook Carmel, the SLO CAL wine and farm country, and Santa Barbara’s Spanish mission architecture. From the same spine you can widen the trip inland to Yosemite, Napa, Lake Tahoe or the desert spa resorts of Palm Springs, which is exactly what a tailor-made itinerary is for.

National parks, chosen by landscape

With more than 60 national parks, the question is never “which park?” but “which landscape?”. For canyon country, Utah’s Mighty Five between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City delivers five national parks in one seamless drive, with the Grand Canyon added via Arizona. For forests, waterfalls and wildlife, the Pacific Coast strings park after park together. And in the east, the Great Smoky Mountains are America’s most visited national park, drawing over 12 million visitors a year, and one of the very few that are free to enter. The Smokies, and the Appalachian ranges through Virginia and the Carolinas, also deliver autumn foliage every bit as spectacular as New England, with far fewer coach tours.

East Coast cities by rail

New York, Washington DC, Philadelphia and Boston are linked by a fast, comfortable rail corridor, which makes a two or three-city East Coast itinerary genuinely effortless. Each city earns its place: Philadelphia pairs the birthplace of the United States with tax-free shopping; Boston brings history and lobster rolls; Washington delivers the monuments. New York itself is one of the great hubs of world travel, with three airports and onward connections to almost anywhere, so it slots naturally into far more ambitious journeys, from the Caribbean to round-the-world itineraries.

Texas, the Gulf Coast and family adventures

Families default to Florida and California, and both are brilliant at what they do. But Texas is the insider’s alternative: child-friendly cowboy ranches, desert resorts, Six Flags theme parks, and Caribbean cruises sailing from Galveston, so you can combine the full Americana experience with a beach or cruise finale in a single state. Further east, the beaches of Mississippi and Alabama offer the same Gulf sand as Florida with southern food, music and hospitality thrown in.

Hawaii

Hawaii is Polynesia with American ease, and one of the great honeymoon finales. It sits a further five-to-six-hour flight beyond the West Coast, so it works best either as the closing chapter of a longer multi-centre journey via Los Angeles, San Francisco or Dallas, or as a dedicated trip in its own right. With two weeks or more, an island-hopping itinerary opens up everything from volcanic national parks to the surf beaches and film locations of Kauai and Oahu.

How to plan a USA multi-centre holiday properly

The single most important thing to understand about the USA is its size. “It’s huge. You can’t do it all in one — pick your battles,” says Georgia Wiseman. “If you want to do New York, Memphis, Nashville, Yellowstone and a California fly-drive all in one, we’ll do it. We do not recommend it, and definitely not within two weeks, because it’s physically impossible.” The best itineraries never try. Our planning rules are simple and hard-won: allow two weeks where you can, spend at least three nights in each destination, and keep driving days to three or four hours behind the wheel. New York to Los Angeles is a six-hour flight; Memphis to New Orleans is a full day by road or rail. Respect the geography and the country repays you.

Around 80% of the USA holidays we arrange include a fly-drive element, because America is built for driving: the roads are excellent, the distances are honest, and the road trip is part of the experience. But we are equally deliberate about when you should not have a car. City parking can run to $80 a day in San Francisco, and you simply do not need a vehicle in New York, Boston or downtown Atlanta. That is why you will see 14-night itineraries from us with 11 days of car hire: we position pick-ups and drop-offs so the car works for you, not the other way round. Internal flights, meanwhile, run like buses, with one caveat worth knowing: smaller aircraft mean cabin bags are often gate-checked into the hold.

What a specialist changes

Most USA enquiries begin as a wish list: Nashville, Memphis and Dallas, say, or New York and LA in a week. Our job is to turn the wish list into a route that actually works, and the difference shows in the details. Alcatraz sells out roughly three months ahead, so it must be pre-booked; New England accommodation in foliage season is gone by early summer; and choosing between the hundreds of hotels in Manhattan alone is a research project in itself. We have tried and tested the boutique hotels, the New England inns, the California resorts, and yes, the roadside motels, which in America routinely include cooked breakfasts, pools and evening happy hours, and deserve far better than their movie reputation.

We also pre-book the experiences that define a trip, which is usually cheaper than paying locally and always guaranteed. Every Music Cities itinerary includes the Country Music Hall of Fame; our Taste of New England journey includes a Freedom Trail food tour, lobster roll included. It is a small thing that our clients mention in reviews again and again.

The Internet Traveller difference

The biggest operators built their reputations on California fly-drives and New York city breaks, and they do them perfectly well. We chose a different path. “We know we’re not going to compete on the California fly-drives with the bigger operators, so we’ve done it differently,” says Georgia Wiseman. “The Midwest, the Southwest, the Great American West, the Deep South — it’s where we put our attention, and we’re almost the go-to now for those regions.” Our specialism is the raw, authentic side of America: the food, music and pop-culture journeys that most brochures overlook, including exclusive access to Dollywood breaks from the UK. Every itinerary is tailor-made around you, protected by ATOL, and planned by specialists who have driven the routes, ridden the trains and eaten in the diners they recommend. Tell us what you want from America, even if it is only half an idea, and we will build the journey that gets you there.