Locals Reveal 25 Tourist Hot Spots That Are Overhyped
We love to daydream about future trips and compile bucket lists of destinations we’re desperate to visit. When planning itineraries and booking activities, people often have sky-high expectations that may need slight curtailing according to their destination of choice. While it’s true that travelling abroad can be fun, rewarding, and enriching, it’s important to remember that some places can feel surprisingly underwhelming in person.
#1
Giulietta House in Verona. And a lot of other things, famous for the wrong reason.
polarbearsloveme:
I’m a moron so I went super out of my way to get to Verona to see this, got there, realized Romeo and Juliet were never real people so this balcony has no meaning but to trap tourists, and was like why did I do all that.
#2
Plymouth Rock without question.
HawocX:
As arguably the worst tourist attraction in the world, it’s now firmly on my list of must-sees.
stoinkb:
Absolutely underwhelming and so unlikely to have had anything to do with the Pilgrim’s arrival.
#3
The spire of Dublin, dumbest thing we got in my opinion.
Thought it was pretty sick when they turned it into a lightsaber for Star Wars Day.
#4
This [hellhole]. €10.45 for a pint.
m1kasa4ckerman:
One of my friends who had never been to Ireland before came to visit. They were very adamant “all my friends said I have to go to the temple bar”…. I kept trying to explain it was kind of like going to Olive Garden in Times Square NYC.
#5
Teen and tween girls visit Forks, Washington hoping to see hunky, sparkly vampires and werewolves (because of Twilight) and end up seeing a depressed, gloomy logging town.
#6
Poverty safari… er… guided tours through favelas. They exist not because anyone is interested in seeing the history and important places in a favela, but driven by tourists who want to see poverty and feel happier with their lives.
BAaaaaaaaaa22:
Ugh that’s as bad as the ‘Katrina tours’ here in New Orleans. 20 years later people still want to see the damage from the hurricane and levee failures.
#7
Anything ghost or wizard/Harry Potter related in York, UK. Pathetic because ghosts don’t exist and York has zero connection to Harry Potter. There’s so much actual history to immerse yourself in, it boggles the mind why people spend their money on it.
#8
The Blarney Stone- I get that it’s a pretty castle but millions of people have kissed this to get ‘the gift of the gab’ and all I can think is that now all these people have cold sores cause you know someone with a cold sore has kissed it at least a thousand times.
#9
I live in Washington state so I will have to say the Gum Wall. It’s a wall in an alley in Seattle that’s covered in people’s chewed gum.
#10
The red light district.
GrimyGrippers:
I accidentally walked through there when I visited. It was SO bizarre to see people in the windows, and yet businesspeople are just going about their day and not batting an eye. Meanwhile I just hurried my pace and tried to act natural haha
#11
Hollywood. LA itself has better to offer let alone the rest of the country.
pdx_foodie_raver:
Hollywood was one of the biggest disappointments of my life. I’m like “this is it?”
#12
Les Champs Élysées.
No actual Parisian goes there it’s a clownery of a tourist trap with no authenticity and a ton of pickpockets.
#13
The Little Mermaid in Copenhagen…
MarketingNew5370:
I agree, it is an underwhelming statue with a boring Industrial background which is often marketed as the highlight of any trip to Copenhagen. The literal fortress right next, Kastellet, is infinitely more interesting.
#14
“Dracula’s castle”
Vlad Țepeș never even came near it in all his life. The castle is pretty, but cramped due to the sheer number of tourists.
#15
Poverty stricken places. Just why?
Anonymous:
Came here to say ‘slums’. Yall, I promise India has better places than Dharavi.
narvuntien:
It was actually in Busan, South Korea they painted a bunch of Poor peoples houses bright colours and called it a tourist attaction and the poor try to hawk you trickets from thier front doors. It was so exploitative for both the poor and the tourists.
#16
The Inverness “it’s nae a bonk machine”.
Fuzzy-Gear1965:
I genuinely think one of the funniest things to come out of Scotland is a railing that’s nae a bunk machine becoming a tourist destination.
#17
Sunny Beach, Bulgaria.
It is a resort town that somehow marketed itself successfully throughout Europe for all the wrong reasons.
The [worst] tourists (violent alcoholics from Sweden, redneck Brits, russians) started flocking there to get drunk cheaply, and the local businessmen layer tons upon tons of concrete and plastic to create a ridiculous skyline.
The resort has been a chaos of luxury hotels and vomiting drunkards on the streets ever since, with none of the charm that a peaceful beach town should have.
#18
I’m always shocked when in Vegas and I hear foreign accents. Like, you came from Europe for… this??
Gogyoo:
You couldn’t pay me money to go there, let alone spend money there.
greaper007:
This falls in the category of a place that used to be amazing and now isn’t worth it. I still remember doing maybe 5 days in Vegas for about 150 bucks in 03.
#19
The Holy Stone of Clonrichert.
#20
Moulin rouge.
skabben:
My experience is that all tourist spots in Paris is full of scammers and people trying to sell you [stuff]. Really ruins the experience.
#21
The stupid bean in Chicago.
#22
This door in the city of Québec, Québec Province, Canada.
Koreans travel to take picture of that door because it was featured in a popular K Drama show.
#23
Blue boathouse, Perth Australia.
meandhimandthose2:
This was my pick as well, it’s not even famous for anything. It is just, a boathouse?? Yet people line up for ages just for a picture. Even on their wedding day!!
#24
Neuschwanstein, honestly, the castle is great from the outside, but save yourself the entrance fee. What you only find out after entering is that inside there are basically only a few truly finished rooms.
#25
The liberty bell in Philadelphia. Guys, it’s just a big bell that rang like, twice. Great symbol, underwhelming attraction.
#26
This bench. The Chinese will queue for hours for a chance to sit on this bench. It’s in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia.
The story behind it is a pop star called Jay Chou sat there once, posting a picture to social media. As a result, it’s now a huge Chinese tourist thing to do, and leaves everyone else more than slightly bemused.
#27
The book tower in municipal library in Prague.
Various guides mention it as a “hidden” or “secret” spot.
In reality there’s always a queue where tiktokkers and instagrammers waits for hours to take the same picture.
#28
Mount Rushmore.
bluechickenz:
Mount Rushmore is so strange… the scale is pretty amazing and the monument is quite cool, but it just looks so small and underwhelming in person.
#29
Alexanderplatz in Berlin.
An urban planning crime and a gathering place for poverty. A terrible place.
#30
I’m going to say the American side of Niagara Falls. Technically the more aesthetic half is on the US side, but you can only see it well from the Canadian side. Even our tourist trap attractions in the area are [worse].
#31
A staircase in my neighborhood I used to go sledding down as a kid when New York City had heavier snowfalls in the 90s. It’s now referred to as the “Joker Stairs” because of Joaquin Phoenix’s performance in the Joker(2019) in which he dances down a part of the staircase and it attracts so many tourists daily. It’s just a staircase…
#32
Apparently, the lighthouse in Aberdeen is a hidden gem, which is possibly the funniest things I’ve heard since, you know, it’s a lighthouse.
#33
This, Vinicuna or “color mountain”.
It is one of those places that became a thing after instagramers started taking pictures in front of it.
However, on instagram, you can edit the color so it looks way more vibrant, and you can take it from an angle that looks like a huge mountain.
In reality, you need to take a bus ride that’s far away and do a hike just to end up at this underwhelming hill with some colors caused by minerals.
#34
I don’t get the interest in touching the nose of Grayfriars Bobby
#35
Platform 9 3/4 at London Kings Cross Station.
It’s not even on a platform like in the novels/movies – it’s just a sign they’ve affixed to a portion of blank wall on the main station concourse.
Shanilou Perera
Shanilou has always loved reading and learning about the world we live in. While she enjoys fictional books and stories just as much, since childhood she was especially fascinated by encyclopaedias and strangely enough, self-help books. As a kid, she spent most of her time consuming as much knowledge as she could get her hands on and could always be found at the library. Now, she still enjoys finding out about all the amazing things that surround us in our day-to-day lives and is blessed to be able to write about them to share with the whole world as a profession.
