Wilmington-area beach among America's most accessible, study says

For out-of-town travelers looking to make their beach vacation as easy as possible, one Wilmington-area spot has them covered. Wilmington-area residents might be accustomed to having the beach available right in their backyard, but for people who live in the interior of the country, a beach trip isn

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What is the story about?

For out-of-town travelers looking to make their beach vacation as easy as possible, one Wilmington-area spot has them covered.

Wilmington-area residents might be accustomed to having the beach available right in their backyard, but for people who live in the interior of the country, a beach trip isn’t so simple -- particularly when it comes to getting there.

A trip typically involves not only a flight but also a lengthy drive afterward to get from the airport to the sand. But one beach in the Cape Fear region proves to be an exception.

A study from Mozio, a global ground transportation provider, found that Wrightsville Beach was one of the most accessible beaches in the entire United States when it came to travel time from the local airport.

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How far is it from the airport to Wrightsville Beach?

It’s about a 10-mile drive from Wilmington International Airport (ILM) to Wrightsville Beach, which is unusually short for the 100 beaches included in the study. For just the destinations located in the United States, the average distance from airport to beach was about 28 miles -- almost three times that of Wrightsville Beach.

Wrightsville Beach also beats out the other Wilmington-area spots in this metric. Carolina Beach, for example, is about 18 miles away from the airport. If you’re going north to Surf City, that drive exceeds 30 miles, as does the trip south to the Brunswick County beaches.

Is Wrightsville Beach easy to get to?

Mozio’s study looked at the accessibility of 100 well-known beaches from across the world.

The report calculated the average drive time to Wrightsville Beach at around 23 minutes, which landed it as the 9th most accessible beach out of the spots included in the study.

Another North Carolina beach destination found itself on the complete opposite end of the spectrum. The study found that the Outer Banks was the least-accessible destination in the U.S., with an average drive time of 140 minutes from the closest airport, Norfolk International Airport in Virginia.