Our city may be one of the most underrated in the country, but the Oceanfront certainly isn’t. We’ve got over forty blocks of retail businesses on the strip running alongside the largest pleasure beach in the world, and together they draw over twenty million visitors a year to the boardwalk.

Thanks largely to these three factors, the economic impact from tourism here is often over $2 billion in a single year, and in 2021 it was over $3 billion. Nearly $220 million of that was spent on food and beverages, and nearly $900 million was spent on entertainment and recreation, a testament to just how much there is to do at the Oceanfront.

Things To Do

Over that forty blocks you’ll find a multitude of shopping, dining, and entertainment options, and, of course, lodging options for any budget. For fishing you can head to the Virginia Beach Fishing Pier at 15th Street, and if you’ve got kids the south end of the strip has Grommet Island Park for the young ones to play in.

And if you’re looking for a break from all this, just over a mile past the north end of the strip you’ll find an entrance to First Landing State Park, a maritime forest making up most of Cape Henry. In its campgrounds and on its twenty miles of trails you’ll feel completely removed from all the events at the strip.

TheTravel.com’s favorite boardwalk was the Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles, followed by Coney Island in New York and Ocean City Boardwalk in New Jersey.