One airport, three different journeys
All three resorts realistically route through Innsbruck Airport, which sits inside the city itself. What changes is what happens after you land.
Innsbruck: no transfer at all
This is the resort's biggest practical advantage. The airport is a short taxi or tram ride from the city center and from the base of several ski areas. You can realistically be on snow the same afternoon you land, something neither of the other two can offer.
St. Anton: about an hour, by road or rail
St. Anton sits roughly an hour's drive west of Innsbruck along the Arlberg route, and it's also directly served by the ÖBB rail network with a station in the village itself — genuinely one of the more train-friendly major ski resorts in the Alps. Winter road conditions through the Arlberg pass can add time; the train sidesteps that variable entirely.
Kitzbühel: about 75 minutes, road or rail
Kitzbühel is a little further from Innsbruck than St. Anton by road, and like St. Anton it has its own train station with direct connections. Some visitors instead fly into Salzburg, which sits at a broadly similar distance from Kitzbühel to the east — worth comparing flight options on both airports before booking.
Do you need a rental car?
Not if you're staying in one resort — all three have functioning local bus and lift networks that cover a single-base trip without a car. A car becomes worth it if you want to combine more than one of these resorts in the same trip, or to reach the further-out Innsbruck-region ski areas like Kühtai on your own schedule rather than public transport timetables.