Can someplace be a tourist trap if you don't pay money to see it?

[Voyager]

@Schnitte

If we take a strong economic reliance on tourism as a criterion for considering a city a tourist trap, then Ie would say the biggest tourist trap on this planet would be Las Vegas.

I assume you mean the Strip. When my daughter lived in Vegas, the only time she went to the Strip was when she got free show tickets from work, or when we took her and her husband to brunch. When natives gamble they go to one of the casinos not on the strip.
I’m not sure if Fremont Street counts as a tourist trap also. Probably.

[Schnitte]

@Voyager

I assume you mean the Strip.

No, I meant the entire city of Las Vegas, by the metric (proposed by another poster) that a city qualifies as a tourist trap if its economic basis is almost exclusively tourism and related industries. I think Las Vegas qualifies for that.

[Voyager]

44% of the jobs in Vegas are tourism based. However 25% of the economy of the state of Hawaii is tourism based. Is the entire place a tourist trap?
When we went to visit her we hardly saw much tourist stuff. But we drove. The airport is end to end slot machines.

[cormac262]

@Schnitte

No, I meant the entire city of Las Vegas, by the metric (proposed by another poster) that a city qualifies as a tourist trap if its economic basis is almost exclusively tourism and related industries. I think Las Vegas qualifies for that.

Your definition based on economic basis would qualify Vegas as a “tourist destination”. That is, people make Vegas their endpoint when going there. Most don’t “happen to stop by” because they’re in the area (because there really isn’t much in the area ;-). Yes, I realize that many stop in on their way to places like SLC, or Zion, or the north rim of the Grand Canyon.

When I think of a “tourist trap”, it is some attraction that lures you (and possibly some of your cash) while you are on your way to your intended destination. A place like Reptile Gardens (which I happen to like) qualifies as most people are really on their way to see Mt. Rushmore when they stop in.

The best example of this that comes to mind is The Thing in Arizona, just west of the border with New Mexico on I-10. There is nothing to draw you to this particular location, so 99.9% of the people who pass through on I-10 are doing just that: passing through. But from hundreds of miles away, there are billboards enticing you to find out just what The Thing is. So after hours of desert driving, as you find yourself needing either gas or a bathroom break, you find your curiosity has gotten the better of you. And you decide to pull off at The Thing exit. (but unlike the OP, you do need to pay for this one). The point being is that it is a “trap” because you wouldn’t be going there just to see it, you would be passing through.

[kaylasdad99]

@bump

I don’t know about that… crap vendors are everywhere, regardless of how solemn or interesting the actual tourist venue may be. Doesn’t necessarily make it a tourist trap.

IMO what makes something a tourist trap is when the actual attraction is inconsequential or lackluster, and it’s been hyped up to the point where it mostly serves as a sort of touristic honeypot to draw them in and sell them crap.

As much as it pains me to say it as a Texan, the Alamo is a prime example of this. It’s a little, mostly reconstructed Spanish mission in the heart of downtown San Antonio that was the site of a famous battle in 1836. But little of that is really evident, considering the location in the midst of downtown San Antonio, and the amount of imagination it takes to visualize what it must have been like back then.

Yet people go to San Antonio in droves to see it, and the whole area around it is a massive tourist area- there’s a Legoland, a shopping mall across the street, a Ripley’s Believe it or Not, the Riverwalk is prominent nearby, hotels, wax museums, and dozens of bars and restaurants of all kinds dot the cityscape for blocks around.

That’s my yardstick for whether or not something is a tourist trap- I compare it to the Alamo and see how it stacks up.

So, what I’m hearing is that if it DOES have a basement, it’s NOT a tourist trap…