Utah · park

What a trip to Moab costs

A week in Moab for eight people works out around $12,000 before flights — $398 a night for a place sleeping four, scaled for the group, plus $81 per adult per day for food. From Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Seattle and Phoenix it is cheaper for a family of four to drive than to fly.

A desert town sitting between Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, and a base for hiking in both. Mountain biking on the Slickrock Trail and off-road driving draw visitors of their own.

with children okadults-only trip goodstroller / limited mobility poorelevation 4,560 ft

What a week costs

Lodging and food only. Seven nights, whole-property rental, all fees in.

Group	Lodging	Food	Total	Per person
4 people	$2,790	$2,270	$5,050	$1,260
8 people	$7,500	$4,540	$12,000	$1,500
12 people	$10,300	$6,800	$17,100	$1,420

Note the per-person column does not simply fall. A place sleeping four is the efficient unit; going to eight means changing property class, which costs more than double. Past eight it improves again — each additional person adds roughly half what they did over the first jump. The expensive step is condo to house, not the people you put in it.

How Moab compares

MoabParks median of 5All destinations median of 40

Nightly lodging for a property sleeping four, month by month. Medians are taken across the seeded destinations in each group, so they are the middle of that group rather than any one place.

Averaged across the year, Moab runs $412 a night for a property that sleeps four. That is 40% above the median for all 40 destinations in the library ($295), making it the 10th most expensive of 40 destinations. Against its own kind it is priced almost exactly at the typical park ($407).

The same week costs $1,863 more in September than in January on lodging alone, before anyone has bought a flight.
Although it is more expensive than the typical park across the year, it undercuts one in 7 months of the year.
Driving beats four seats from Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Seattle and Phoenix. The longest of those is Seattle — 978 road miles and 15.9h each way, and only $190 cheaper than four seats — thin enough that most groups would fly anyway.
The cheapest seven nights of the year fall in January, at $1,846 for the whole property — $3,709 for the same week in September.
The sharpest single step is between October and November: moving the same week across that line changes the lodging bill by $1,863.
The closest thing to it on price is Cape Cod, MA, a beach town: $11,937 for a week for eight against $12,034 here, $97 apart — the same money for a completely different trip.

When to go

Moab is at its most expensive in September and cheapest in January — a 101% swing on the same property.

Month	Per night, sleeps 4
January	$264
February	$264
March	$508
April	$508
May	$508
June	$508
July	$398
August	$398
September	$530
October	$530
November	$264
December	$264

Getting there

The two halves are not priced the same way, which is the whole point: a seat costs per person, a car costs the same whatever the headcount.

	Flying		Driving
From	Round tripper person	Each wayhours	Round tripper car	Each wayhours	Cheaperfor four
Atlanta	$471	5.9h	$2,437	25.9h3 days	flying
Chicago	$446	5.3h	$1,972	21.0h3 days	flying
Dallas	$414	4.5h	$1,400	15.1h2 days	driving
Denver	$366	3.4h	$514	6.2h	driving
Los Angeles	$393	4.0h	$1,020	11.2h2 days	driving
New York	$512	8.6h	$3,187	33.8h4 days	flying
Seattle	$419	4.7h	$1,486	15.9h2 days	driving
Phoenix	$375	3.6h	$694	8.0h	driving

Drives over ten hours are shown in days as well: nobody drives that in one go. The nights on the road are not counted here, so a long drive is cheaper on this page than it would be in life. All fares are modeled from distance — no published average covers this airport. Driving uses the IRS standard mileage rate, which includes running costs, not just fuel.

See all 5 parks in the library →

Compare Moab against other destinations →

Where these numbers come from

Lodging is indexed from the US federal per-diem schedule (GSA) for this county, calibrated against real rental listings. Food uses this location's own federal meal tier. Fares come from the DOT Consumer Airfare Report where that airport pair is published, and from a model fitted to 2,089 real DOT fares otherwise. Everything here is an estimate for planning, not a quote — check real prices before booking.