Why do some people hate tourists? What's a tourist trap?

In My Humble Opinion
21

My main issue with tourists in my city are the ones that, in the pursuit of their perfect vacation, are oblivious, lack common courtesy, or are actively (sometimes aggressively) rude, or some combination of the three.

If you’re a tourist and don’t do any of those things, I’ll never even notice you, no harm, no foul.

However, a large number of them seem to be shocked, shocked! that people actually live in the city they’re visiting. Some relatively minor incidents have already been mentioned, but there are also people who, for example, make as if to leave the train, suddenly stop dead in the doorway, and get pissy and shouty because the 50 people behind them couldn’t stop in time to not blunder into them. During rush hour.

Or stopping suddenly anywhere that’s a high-traffic area. For the love of god, take a moment to get yer head out yer ass, look around you, and step off to the side out of the way.

Or talking at outdoor-volume in an enclosed train car. Your friend is 12 inches away from you, and the city residents aren’t talking. Your friend can hear you!

The best example of this rudeness, and the epitome of why I hate tourists: once I was driving home from the gym. I was sweaty and gross, because, you know, I’d just been at the gym. It was a warm afternoon, so my window was rolled down. While waiting at a red light, some idiot chick and her idiot chick friends in the SUV next to me started pointing and laughing at me, and one of them whipped out a camera and started taking pictures. Uhm, excuse me? I’m not an effing zoo display! They got a number of photos of me scratching my temple with my middle finger. :rolleyes:

Once the light changed and they drove off, I checked their plates, and sure enough, they were out-of-state.

22

A good tourist attraction IMO is one that the local residents also visit from time to time (and not just the once on moving to the town).

23

Our big tourist trap is Fisherman’s Wharf & Pier 39. No one from SF goes there*, because very little is worth a second look, and it’s all overpriced. Hey look, a shitty camera shop and a shitty t-shirt shop, and a Walgreens with shitty cameras and shitty t-shirts! I think, at least around here, that’s the trap.

-*minus a handful who will no doubt say they go three times a week and love it, including me when a friend bartended at Pompei’s Grotto.

Why people hate tourists, I have no idea. I went to Bring Your Own Big Wheel one year with some friends, which is just the epitome of goofy SF-type fun, but between races, one of my friends would start yelling at everyone who looked like a tourist, for no apparent reason. To this day, I have no idea why, especially since their tax dollars (at the tourist traps) help keep this city going. (Also since said friend isn’t even from here and was a tourist once, himself.)

I’m pretty ambivalent toward tourists, and I’ll occasionally offer my help to one who looks lost. But I’ll agree with other posters that it’s annoying when I have Shit To Do and they’re blocking the sidewalk or subway door or whatever.

Also, just a tip- do not wear shorts & Hawaiian shirts to Fisherman’s Wharf. “Sunny California” does not actually include all (or even most) of California, and we will laugh at you for that. :wink:

24

Since you took that one, I’ll add another “attraction” of that state – the World’s Only Corn Palace. When I was about 12 and living in Ohio, my dad took the family on a trip out west. My mother had paid a childhood visit to the Corn Palace, and remembered a lot of museum-type displays about growing, harvesting, and processing maize. Although the architecture and the murals on the outside were pretty cool, however, the interior of the Palace was just one huge gift shop by the time I set foot inside there. At least admission was free, but you were obviously expected to buy some pennants, postcards, snow globes, giant pencils, and other gewgaws.

The phrase “tourist trap” also brings to mind the many places that go by such names as Mystery Hill and Gravity Hill. Your car rolls uphill! Dad is suddenly shorter than little Joey! Of course, there’s nothing paranormal at play, just optical illusion.

25

To me tourists traps aren’t just limited to attractions - some restaurants/pubs I’d consider tourist traps as well…the ones that happen to be right on the popular stretches and serve mediocre overpriced food/drinks

26

The Royal Mile in Edinburgh’s a good example of a tourist trap. It’s got two big tourist attractions at either end, the castle at one end and Holyrood house at the other. All along, there’s hundreds of shops selling cheap bagpipes, kilts made from polyester, tartan towels and ginger wigs. All the shops are blaring horrific bagpipe music over loud speakers, and have men dressed as William Wallace outside their door, trying to get people in. In short, it’s a bit of a circus.

Pubs and restaurants are three times more expensive along the mile than they are less than ten minutes walk off it.

(Tourists, I’ll give you a clue: if the kilt you buy costs you less than £200, chances are, it probably isn’t worth buying!)

27

My problem with tourists is when they prevent me from participating in my normal life.

When I was living in a beach town, I would go to the beach once a month but during the summer it was so crowded on weekends that Thursday through Monday there wasn’t enough room to run the dog or play volleyball. If I wanted to watch 4th of July fireworks over the ocean I’d have to show up 4 hrs early to get with in 3 blocks of the beach. Basically it turns all the big beach days into stay at home days.

Now that I’m up in the mountains the biggest problem is that the ski bums all want to go out to dinner on their way home from the mountain and every single restaurant is at least an hour wait. Not to mention the roads in both places see about 3 times as much traffic as they were designed to during tourist season so I can’t even get to the grocery store.

28

Another amusing tourist story:

Someone I know was on the bus on her way home from work, and overheard a conversation among a tourist family. They were discussing a man they’d seen who was sleeping on the sidewalk. One of the adults suggested that the man must have just gotten off work, and was just too tired to make it back home to sleep.

And they were serious.

The conversation went on for a good ten minutes or so, and not once did anyone mention that maybe he was sleeping on the sidewalk because he had no where else to go.

29

Sounds like the locals’ problem. :wink:

30

This sums up why I was on the verge of committing patricide when my dad and I were in London a few years ago. He was the very model of the modern Ugly American.

The money is “weird.” The food is “weird.” The accents are “weird.” I think he was expecting a Disney-fied version of home or something, only with older stuff.

I used to work at Boot Hill, the big attraction in Dodge City.

“Where are the mountains? There’s mountains on Gunsmoke!” OK, you pick up I-70 at Wakeeny, drive 8 hours west, and hang a right at Pueblo.

“Where’s Matt Dillon and Miss Kitty?” Go back to your hotel room, and channel 9 probably has Gunsmoke running at some ungodly hour, and if you must, “Miss Kitty” will be hosting the saloon show at 7. But since they didn’t really exist, no, this house didn’t belong to either one of them.

We weren’t allowed to call them “tourists” on the grounds. They were “guests” or “visitors.” (And we weren’t just teenaged lackeys parked in stupid costumes to make sure we didn’t get ripped off; oh no, we were “interpretors of history.”) We took great pleasure at screaming “tourist” at anyone with an out-of-town license plate in our off time.

31

Anything you see relative to the gangster era in Chicago is probably a tourist trap. There aren’t many authentic relics of the gangster era around, and nobody who lives here cares much about it or wants anything to do with it. Outsiders, however, seem to love it.

32

Hate is a strong word, but in So. California, if someone’s parked on an entrance ramp waiting for the traffic to clear before they try to merge with freeway traffic, it’s a very good bet the people are from out of state. Trying that is almost suicidal, because now you’ve lost your initial speed and will be merging with maybe 65 mph traffic while doing 35mph.

33

Agreed. I think tourist traps tend to spring up around legitimate tourist attractions. The fact the the Park Service runs a Statue of Liberty gift shop is fine - but the dozens of vendors selling chintzy souvenirs and the people dressed up in Statue costumes who want money to pose for photos turn Battery Park into a tourist trap associated with the legitimate tourist attraction that is the Statue of Liberty.

Wall Drug is, indeed, the King of All Tourist Traps, and it is awesome.

34

I love tourists. They help to pay our taxes. But there’s more to Orlando than Disney World, bless their hearts.

35

I’ve read that in Hawaii, some Native Hawaiian activists consider tourists a scourge (possibly representative of the core problem of America taking over their kingdom in the first place) and would rather they just stopped coming altogether.

What they think the economy will do after that, I don’t know. Maybe they envision kicking enough people out so that they’ll be self-sufficient, or would depend on some kind of business development or starting to charge the military.

36

Are you really asking for examples of “good tourist attractions?” Okay, well…here are some well-known U.S. tourist attractions that I’ve visited and think are worthwhile: (And I’m not even going to give you anyplace in the Northeast.)

Alcatraz Island. San Francisco, CA
The “Underground Tour.” Seattle, WA
Yosemite National Park
The Desert Botanical Garden. Phoenix.
The Grand Canyon
Kennedy Space Center. Cape Canaveral, FL
Gatorland. Orlando, FL

Some of those places are natural wonders. Some are man-made. Some are of historical interest. 5 of the 7 are places that were not specifically created for visitors. Two were, but neither fall into the “tourist trap” category. I suspect that Gatorland did start as a tourist trap, but it isn’t one now as it doesn’t meet any of the criteria discussed above. (In fact, I visited Sea World right after Gatorland, and Sea World was the tourist trap!)

37

I’ll assume it’s the gangsters you don’t want anything to do with. Or is it the era?

38

I used to see a bit of this at my previous job; very lost American tourists wandering in wanding to know why they can’t plug their hair-dryers in or how come we drive on the “wrong” side of the road etc.

I even recall one woman talking to me VERY LOUDLY AND SLOWLY like I was some kind of Mexican petrol station attendant. She was amazed when I replied to her (in my best BBC Newsreader voice “I. SPEAK. ENGLISH. AND. SO. DOES. NEARLY. EVERYONE. ELSE. IN. AUSTRALIA.” and replied with a “Really? Well fancy that!” as if it was a stroke of good luck that she happened to walk into the only shop in town where the staff spoke English. :rolleyes:

The biggest problem many people have with tourists, IMHO, is that they clog up the infrastructure so the locals don’t get to use it, and in many cases the locals don’t gain any benefits from having the tourists around in the first place (or if they do, it’s still not outweighed by the fact it can take an hour to drive three kilometres across town in peak season of whatever). Not just roads, but as other people have mentioned upthread, restaurants, beaches, particular areas of town, and all sorts of other things that the locals might want to use or enjoy but can’t because half the country is there on their holiday.

39

I don’t hate tourists.

What I hate are the ones who come here and treat the whole place as a giant amusement park, and the people here as park guests whose only purpose is to amuse them. One noted attraction, the Tsukiji fish markets, finally decide to hell with the tourists after too many of them were getting in the way, interfering with the auctions, and just generally acting like obnoxious asshats. After being off-limits for a couple of months, the recently started allowing guided tours back, but no drop-in visits anymore.

Most tourists aren’t like this, and a lot of the people who are aren’t here as tourists.

40

Ya kind of, if the roads were improved the town would lose it’s quite beach town atmosphere and they would go some where else eliminating the need. But I think the biggest it that the locals don’t want them around so they don’t want them to be comfortable.