Every year Travel + Leisure invites its readers to take part in a survey for what they call the “World’s Best Awards,” where everything from hotels to cruise ships are ranked based on how satisfied actual travelers were with them over the previous three years.

But the magazine goes further and also wants to know which cities were their favorites to travel to over that period, and this year the readers have decided that Charleston, SC deserves top honors. World-famous destinations New York City, Chicago, and Honolulu were found in the readers’ top ten, unsurprisingly, at positions 5, 7, and 10, respectively.

But you don’t have to look very far down the list to find Hampton Roads represented either. Williamsburg, VA was called the 9th best city in the country with 83.40 points, just 5.21 points behind first place.

While we don’t have access to the readers’ thoughts, Williamsburg is best known for preserving and depicting colonial history and is home to the fantastic Busch Gardens theme park. It also benefits from its proximity to both Jamestown and Yorktown for history lovers, and is a short drive from the rest of Hampton Roads and from the Virginia capitol, Richmond. All this conveniently located in the middle of Atlantic Coast making it accessible by car to a large segment of the US population.

This isn’t the first time travelers have shown a great fondness for Hampton Roads. Last year readers of Condé Nast Traveller called Norfolk the 7th friendliest city, and in 2017 Travel + Leisure called Norfolk America’s Favorite City overall. With the cities of Hampton Roads now  increasingly working together to attract the world’s travelers, we can expect the region to become an even bigger draw in the future, and expect even more appearances on travelers’ “best of” lists.