Starter Guide

First time to the OBX? No problem!

The Outer Banks makes for a wonderful vacation. It's a family-oriented destination, with a strong connection to nature and history. Sure the beach is there, and it's great, and you'll love it - but there's LOTS more at the Outer Banks than the Beach. Just check out our Activities page, if you don't believe us.

There's so much about it's that's different, sometimes it's hard to know where to even start. So we've tried to help first-time beach planners figure out everything the need and need to do to have a great beach vacation at the Outer Banks.

To start with, for the most part, people rent houses when they go to the Outer Banks. In fact, most of the rentable property is houses. Not hotels. Not apartments. Not condos. Houses. That's not true in all cases, of course. Certainly, there are hotels, like the Hilton Garden Inn Outer Banks in Kitty Hawk, or the Beacon Motor Lodge in Nags Head. And there are apartment/condos, like the Croatan Surf Club.

For the most part, though, it's houses rented on a weekly basis. So most of the prices you see are a weekly rental rate for a property - not a nightly rate.

When you're looking for properties, you'll want to consider a handful of factors:

How many people are going (how many bedrooms will you need)?

What part of the Outer Banks do you want to stay in?

How close do you want to be to the Beach or Sound?

When will you go?

How much will you spend?

Like everything else, though, cost typically drives a lot of the answers to the other questions. Staying on the Soundside in the off-season is far less expensive than staying during the peak seasons in an Oceanfront property. our budget can be almost always accommodated so long as your flexible on most of the othe factors.