Here in NYC, there is a very negative attitude towards tourists. Is it the same in other big tourist destinations?
I suspect the attitude is probably the same most everywhere. Most people probably can’t stand tourists, but they welcome the money they spend while in town.
I grew up in Wyoming, and most people I knew hated the tourists that would come through town.
Here at the Jersey Shore, many residents have very negative attitude towards the Bennies[sup]1[/sup] that come streaming down every summer.
In Wildwood, it is more about the “Pennies[sup]2[/sup]”
The silly part is both NYC and the Jersey shore make a lot of money from Tourism and really rely on it.
Jim
- Tourist from NYC
- Tourist from Pennsylvania
My dad lives in Sag Harbor, NY, which is a village in the towns of East and South Hampton. When I was younger (15+ years ago) it did not draw as many seasonal visitors as I have seen in recent years. The beach was sparsely populated and you did not trip over people when you went out at night for ice cream. Additionally, the line to get ice cream was not 40 minutes long. Now the downtown area has been completely transformed and the permanent residents hate it. On summer nights, the town is crowded and noisy and during the daytime the beaches are covered with bodies. The traffic has also become ridiculous. Roads that few people knew about are fully congested with weekend commuters. My dad doesn’t seem to mind too much but he likes talking to random people. The neighbors who have been there a while detest it and most prefer the quieter times between Labor Day and Memorial Day. Personally, I enjoy the nightlife and hanging out on the beaches, but I do hate the overcrowded atmosphere.
Like previous posters have stated, the relationship is love hate. You may hate the presence of rowdy tourists but you cannot turn away their money.
What a minute. How can New Yorkers hate tourists? New Yorkers are tourists!
In other words, yes. Here in scenic New England, there’s a love/hate relationship with tourists, many of whom come from New York or Boston or Quebec. Someone suggested changing the state motto to “Thank you for visiting Maine. Please leave your money and go away.”
Apparently, it’s reciprocated. I knew a guy who ran a B&B for quite some time. He said it was universally accepted in the “hospitality industry” that, broadly speaking, there were just two important categories of guests:
- People from New York
- Everybody else
Moderator’s Note: Taking the thread on an all-expenses-paid trip to IMHO. (Also renaming thread.)
Seoulites’ attitudes towards tourists really depend on where the tourists were from. Caucasians tend to get a better reception than other Asian tourists.
Me, I just hate all tourists equally. 
Seriously, I hate looking like a tourist. I do my utmost to blend in wherever I go - my measure of success is when people ask me for directions.
“If it’s called tourist season, how come we aren’t allowed to shoot 'em?”
I found New Yorkers, on my one trip there, to be very welcoming, friendly, polite and helpful. If they thought I was an annoyance, they certainly covered it well.
My only problem with tourists in downtown Chicago is they tend, universally, to not watch where they’re walking. Almost all looking straight up at skyscrapers. Since I’m not watching where I am walking, because I know where I’m going, I sometimes run smack into them.
YES. Plus they walk really slow and tend to gather in front of buskers, slowing pedestrian traffic for at least a block.
I have no problem with tourists. It’s fun to welcome people to my part of the world, help with directions and recommend stuff to do. I’ve been a tourist and treated extremely well in some places (NZ sets the gold standard in my experience) so I like to give back.
The only stereotype I’ve got of tourists is that they are the ones in shorts and t-shirts buying overly-priced fleece pullovers to keep warm when they go to the GG bridge 
Since I am often a tourist myself, and because most of the tourists are either downtown or at the theme parks where I am usually not, I don’t mind them at all. Not to mention our city council really bends them over when it comes to the hotel and rental car tax- tourism tax money ends up paying for a lot of things around here and no one complains about that.
In Hawaii I think it’s more a hate for the fakeiness that is put on for the tourists then the tourists themselves. That the powerful tourism industry and tourist’s unrealistic expectations are slowly changing the culture here for the worse.
Although some individuals do make asses of themselves spectacularly so.
In Pamplona, anybody who actually wants to:
see the town,
figure out how to run with the bulls before ending up in the arms of a Red Cross volunteer,
learn about our history,
see our museums
and who understands that Sanfermines is one week a year,
Gets about 10,000,000,000,000 points more (on a 0-10 scale) than the people who come in wanting to get drunk, get drugged, have sex with strangers, run with the bulls, mention Hemingway, get their picture taken with the bust of Hemingway, pull a bull’s tail :smack:, jump from a fountain (perhaps into the waiting arms of their friends, perhaps into a broken skull), and,
absolutely,
pull a bull’s dick (there aren’t enough :smack:s). There’s a school of thought which considers that one of the negative consequences of television is that the BEEP BEEP BEEP who tried that a couple years ago in the Estafeta did not get linched, as he by Og and St Anthony of Padua (protector of farm animals) should have.
Oh, and outsiders who tell us what they think about our politics are usually met with polite silence, but let it be known that the mental soundtrack is along the lines of “I hope yo mama makes good bucks selling ass, cos you sure ain’t got the brains God gave to a daisy.”
Also from Hawaii. I don’t think I’ve ever heard any serious negative feelings toward tourists. We made fun of the camera-toting Japanese tourists like everyone else did, and we make fun of the way Caucasian tourists pronounce Hawaiian words, but it’s all in fun.
I actually really envy tourists, because they get to see Hawaii as a cool vacation destination. I’ve never known what it’s like to be fascinated by Waikiki or breathless at the sight of a beach sunset. I grew up with these things, so they’re just not the same for me. The closest I came was when I was showing my boyfriend around in September; it was his first trip and his excitement and delight made me want to show him everything right away.
The only negative feelings I have toward tourists are the ones who ignore warnings and do dumb things that require rescue by firemen or the Coast Guard.
Heh-heh, we got enough locals doing that too though. The ones that got me were the ones that complained to me about the prices. Well gee whiz, it’s expensive here? I hadn’t noticed.
Weekenders from London are disliked around here. Parking huge cars in ridiculous places, completely blocking roads. Expecting every pub and cafe to be aware of the latest dietary whim of the chattering classes. Buying holiday homes and driving house prices to preposterous levels. Unaware that they’re often getting in the way of people actually trying to do real jobs. Talking about the place in condescending terms, as though it’s some museum piece rather than peoples’ home.
There are places where the tourists themselves have negative attitudes towards to tourists - meaning tourists other than themselves, of course. Venice is one of these places, apparently.
I spent many of my childhood summers in an historical and achingly pretty seaside village on the south of England where my grandparents lived. It attracted a lot of tourists, who are called “grockles” by the locals. Generally, because of the sedate nature of the place, they were well behaved. We did however, occasionally regard them as a trifle coarse - yeah yeah, I’m a snob.
But there was one element of the tourism that amused us greatly. The road around the harbour is a tidal road: it floods without fail every high tide, to a depth of about five or six feet, though big spring tides make that even deeper, and the water floods the main street of the village too. And it has a parking lot, next to which used to be a small, totally inadequate sign on the sea wall that said: Warning: road liable to tidal flooding.
So almost daily during the summer, grockles would park their cars on the tidal parking lot, then wander off to drop litter and shovel ice cream down their squalling broods’ faces, then end up in the pub and get distracted by several pints of lager, during which time the tide came in.
We did of course warn people if we saw them parking there, but often we were ignored, so then we used to sit on the sea wall taking bets about which cars would survive and which wouldn’t. When the water started lapping the door sills, we would attempt to break into the cars to push them out of harm’s way in the hope of getting a tip (in his childhood, my uncle managed to open a Rolls Royce and save it by moving it to higher ground, for which act of heroism he got a clip round the ear). But those that couldn’t be rescued would all-but disappear under the water in the space of an hour or two, just their roofs showing above the surface. To be greeted later by their livid or crestfallen car owners a while later, and the to-us-amusing sight of the doors being opened and gallons of seawater pouring out.
So, I’d say the attitude there would be “ambivalent”.
I suppose I should clarify my previous post - ignorant Londoners can piss off, but other tourists are just fine. We get a lot from Holland & Belgium, who are no problem at all, and also quite a few older Americans tracing either their own or their family’s history in the forces. They’re respectful of the fact that this is where we live, and genuinely interested in the places they’re visiting.