Excuse my ignorance, I have not traveled a lot in my life time. 
I noticed that people who live in popular places like NYC really hate tourist, but they never say why.
A kind of semi-related question…what is a tourist trap?
I lived in New York City for the first 25 years of my life, and I never thought New Yorkers were particularly hostile to tourists… or at least, no MORE hostile to tourists than they are to each other!
The definition of “tourist trap” varies widely. SOME people use it to refer to practically ANY popular tourist attraction, particularly the ones that end up costing visitors a lot of money.
Others use it to refer to cheapo, stupid roadside attractions in areas frequented by tourists. In any state or city that attracts a lot of tourists, you’re likely to find loads of low-budget operations that proclaim, oh, “Exotic Wildlife” (it’s really a skunk, a ferret and two goats) or “Historic Monument” (it’s just some old, dilapidated house where George Washington once stopped to take a leak). That kind of “tourist trap” is generally a complete waste of time, but they hope passing tourists will stop, pay to get in, and buy a few ashtrays or baseball caps.
To me, an “alligator farm” on the road to Disney World is a typical “tourist trap.” but SOME people will actually refer to Mount Rushmore or the Statue of Liberty as “torist traps.” Depends on your point of view, I guess.
I only hate tourists in specific situations. Like when they gum up sidewalk traffic so they can snap a picture or peer at a map. Also, when they pause in the subway doors to wonder if they’re on the right train and manage to hold everyone else up. Generally, as long as they’re continuously moving, tourists are fine. 
When I think of “tourist traps” I think of something generic and artificial, that exists specifically to attract tourists. No cultural or historic significance. Think “The World’s Largest Ball of String!”
Especially in big cities, there’s a kind of flow to life, a host of unwritten rules, that residents get used to. Tourists are generally unaware of these rules and tend to cause disruptions. Not big ones, but things like blocking the sidewalk to stare up at big buildings or haggling over some minor thing or, if they come from a city with no metro, standing on the left and walking on the right when it should be vice versa (I think). New York is a fast-paced city, and tourists are speedbumps that don’t necessarily need to be there. Sure, the tourism industry might bring in a lot of money to the city, but on an individual level they can be annoying. (Usual disclaimer: there are of course tourists that try to be conscientious and make an effort to not be a burden; those generally aren’t the disliked ones.)
They tend to be loud, travel in large groups and make it hard to enjoy local amenities. People often get “vacation rudeness”. Things like stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to take pictures.
I don’t hate tourists. I just hate when they get all touristy - you know, stopping on the middle of the sidewalk to ogle all the pretty buildings, blocking traffic because they just have to get a picture of whatever uninteresting thing is before them, etc. I’m sure I’ve passed many people who were tourists and I didn’t even know it because they didn’t walk slowly, or hold up the entire program because they were trying to dig their camera phones out of their fanny packs.
Yep, pretty much not tourists, but clueless touristy behavior.
What I hate is when I’m in a rush to get on the subway, and need to buy a token (this was back in the days before Charlie Cards), and some clueless tourist family is negotiating with the token booth guy. “Let’s see… we’ve got two adults, and eighteen children… How many tickets is that? Hey, we’re from out of town, do we get any kind of special discount? And which subway car do we take to get to Cheers?”
Well, there’s the regular kind, used to harvest them for their pelts, and also the much more humane “catch and release” type if you just can’t bear to kill them . . .
Well, as already mentioned, in NYC it can get very annoying if you are going to work and you have these fools stoping in the middle of the subway turnstyle or all of a suddenly stopping dead in the middle of the sidewalk to gawk at the big buildings.
There is also a general “idiot” factor where to many New Yorkers, your basic Middle America tourist tends to come accross as simple and unsophisticated. Classic example would be overweight fans of The Today Show standing around Rockefeller Center with their bad hairdos and fanny packs and big “I [heart] Minnesota” (or wherever) signs. They eat at the same chain restaurants they eat at back home, but think it’s oh so “New York” and exciting because the Red Lobster and Olive Garden in Times Square has a 50 foot sign. No one really “hates” them though.
That’s really more of a stereotype though because those are the most “obviously not from New York” people. If I’m in a bar with some friends and we meet a bunch of people from out of town who look and act normal, no one thinks anything of it.
What makes you think New Yorkers hate tourists. In my experience, New Yorkers welcome tourists–EXCEPT when they amble along the sidewalks, 4 abreast, pointing at the pretty lights, and being utterly oblivious to the human traffic jam forming behind them.
(On preview, I see that a lot of other people responded while I was writing this. Blocking the sidewalk is, apparently, a major theme!)
I think astorian gives a good idea of what “tourist trap” means.
To me, the key is that it’s an attraction that offers little value for the money. The operators are just trying to get you there and collect your admission fees, and hopefully the cost of your lunch and some souvenirs. It’s more hype than substance. To call someplace a tourist trap implies that the customer is being misled into thinking that the attraction is more impressive than it is.
The epitome of the tourist trap would probably be Wall Drug in South Dakota. As I understand it, it started as just a regular drugstore/general store in the Mount Rushmore area. They started to advertise free ice water to entice tourists to stop by. Of course, the owners expected the people to buy other stuff while they were there. The plan worked, so they started to advertise more and more. Since people were coming, they added more things for people to do and spend money on, and started to present themselves as a legitimate attraction. And it worked. It’s an entirely self-aware tourist trap, and its claim to fame is that it IS a tourist trap! The joke is that people are traveling hundreds of miles to visit a drugstore. Ironically, its success as a tourist trap spurred so much development that it created an attraction that is, by all accounts, pretty darn cool and fun. So, in a way, the ultimate tourist trap is not really a tourist trap at all.
Unfortunately, as astorian notes, some people will call any tourist attraction a tourist trap. That’s just stupid. It’s not unreasonable for the Park Service to try and earn a few extra shekels by selling you Statue of Liberty knickknacks. An attempt to make money from the attraction does not make it a trap.
The closest town is Santa Cruz which is one of the ultimate touristy beach towns but more on the low end of the scale than Monterey or Carmel are. During the summer the traffic is nightmarish, the restaurants are crowded and they generally wander around gawking as if they’re at some kind of hippie Disneyland and the raggedy street people are the love generation. They’re in the way and we all love to complain, but without them we have virtually no economy other than the University, nonprofit and local government jobs and there would be no solid sales tax revenue stream for the city to maintain services with. It would be just another little seaside town slowly falling apart and going broke.
I grew up in NYC but no tourists came to the Bronx. When we went to Manhattan I was always amazed at all the people with their cameras lined up to get into what to me were normal places but I left as a teenager so I never really had to deal with any inconvenience.
I spent most of my life in Los Angeles and now live in Minneapolis. I used to work on Hollywood Blvd, but I’m not even going to go there right now. Oddly enough, I don’t see a lot of tourists anymore, though an occasional business traveler will stop to look at the Mary Tyler Moore statue downtown. I gawked for quite a while that there was actual nature out here, but I never stopped in the middle of the street to stare for five minutes.
Gah. When I first went to San Francisco with some idiots from my freshman dorm, everyone decided that they wanted to eat dinner at Tony Roma’s. Are you effing kidding me?
Because tourists are, by their very nature, a transient audience you don’t expect to see again any restaurant that caters to tourists is going to be bland overpriced food and crappy service. When I think “tourist trap” I think of the restaurants located within a block or two of any major attraction.
Go to the Mall of America. Plenty o’ tourists there.
When I think of tourist traps, I think of gift shops that sell little Indian drums with rubber heads and those little plastic pinball machines with a Niagara Falls theme.
For a few years, I had the unfortunate experience of living in Gettysburg. It was there that I learned to to have occasional contempt for tourists. First, because it was a small town, traffic was a nightmare during the high tourist season. Residents learned there ways through alleys and back roads to avoid going through town because of not only the traffic, but the huge number of careless tourists who would step out of their cars to take pictures. There were also a large number of families with children in tow… most of whom could have cared less about the history to be learned. Therefore, the need for more attractions that catered to families resulted in the inevitable min-golf courses, fudge shops, wax museums (complete with miniature 1st ladies!), buffet restaurants, and theme stores. The classic tourist traps… if you don’t like the history, we’ll sanitize it for you and present it to you in moving color, and give you some fudge on the way out the door.
Most tourists leave thinking how charming and quaint it is.
That’s ok. The rest of the world feels the same when New Yorkers travel and do the exact same thing! 
So what are characteristics of good tourist attractions? Examples? Because I admit, I am really into gift shops and the World Largest Ball of String, sort of places.
Oh, as for obnoxious tourists, we almost never have that sort of thing in Kansas City. I can understand why some people may find tourists annoying. Getting out of your cars to take pictures on a busy street? WTH?
Yes. As to residents, the Venice Vaporetto (water bus) is a legitimate service. A monthly pass costs 40 Euro - that’s pretty comparable to the monthly pass on the NYC subway.
But as to tourists, it’s a total tourist trap. A single fare costs 6.50 Euro, a 6th of the monthly fare! You can walk across Venice between the Rialto Bridge/Train Station and the Doge’s Palace in 20 minutes. (includes getting lost and asking whores for directions, true story). People do it “for the experience” and get raped for their interest.