Houston vs Atlanta for Business Travel

Which is the easier business trip — Houston or Atlanta? Airports, getting around, and what’s actually there, compared.

Two very different business-travel cities. Here is the honest side-by-side, the airports, whether you can skip the rental, and how much is actually headquartered there.

Which is easier to get around?

Houston. Two airports, 62.1 million passengers. METRO’s Route 500 Downtown Direct is a genuine nonstop from Terminal E, Door E-201, with Route 102 local at $1.25. Everything is door-specific: rideshare at named doors per terminal and none at Terminal B South.

Atlanta. Airport Station between the two baggage claims, $2.50. No rail from the International Terminal, and rideshare is a five-minute walk to the North Economy lot.

So which is the better business trip?

Atlanta, on any downtown or Midtown trip. The station is closer to your gate than Houston’s bus stop is to its terminal, and it costs half as much.

Houston, if you are honest about where you are going. Neither city’s transit reaches the suburban campuses that generate most business travel — the Energy Corridor and the Woodlands in one, the Perimeter and Alpharetta in the other — but Houston tells you that immediately, while Atlanta’s excellent train can lure you into a plan that ends in a long rideshare anyway.