You may associate tourist traps with bustling city centers, but the U.S. has a long history of unusual roadside attractions all over the country designed to tempt drivers off the road and into the gift shop. If you’ve driven across America, you may have encountered the ‘world’s biggest’ monuments or attractions that stoke your curiosity with endless billboards. We’ve mapped the biggest tourist trap in each U.S. state according to TripAdvisor reviews.
The following are the Top 10 tourist traps in the United States.
Image Credit: Depositphotos.com.
10. Union Oyster House, Boston
“TOURIST TRAP” MENTIONS: 277
Image Credit: Depositphotos.com.
9. Historic River Street, Savannah, Georgia
“TOURIST TRAP” MENTIONS: 283
Image Credit: Depositphotos.com.
8. Hyman’s Seafood, Charleston, South Carolina
“TOURIST TRAP” MENTIONS: 338
Image Credit: hymanseafood.com.
7. Big Texan Steak Ranch, Amarillo, Texas
“TOURIST TRAP” MENTIONS: 458
Image Credit: Depositphotos.com.
6. Navy Pier, Chicago
“TOURIST TRAP” MENTIONS: 507
Image Credit: Depositphotos.com.
5. Cafe Du Monde, New Orleans
“TOURIST TRAP” MENTIONS: 643
Image Credit: Depositphotos.com.
4. Times Square, New York
“TOURIST TRAP” MENTIONS: 661
Image Credit: VitalyEdush.
3. Dole Plantation, Wahiawa, Hawaii
“TOURIST TRAP” MENTIONS: 708
Image Credit: Depositphotos.com.
2. Wall Drug, Wall, South Dakota
“TOURIST TRAP” MENTIONS: 1,049
Image Credit: Depositphotos.com.
1. Fisherman’s Wharf, San Francisco, California
“TOURIST TRAP” MENTIONS: 1,050
Image Credit: Depositphotos.com.
Methodology & Sources
To find the biggest tourist traps in the world, we first searched for the phrase ‘tourist trap’ on TripAdvisor without setting a location filter, which defaults the search setting to ‘worldwide.’ We were then able to gather the names of attractions/places, addresses and the number of mentions of the phrase ‘tourist trap’ in accompanying reviews. The world’s top 10 biggest tourist traps are those with the highest number of mentions of the phrase ‘tourist trap’ in reviews.
We then repeated this process by changing the location filter on TripAdvisor for each country and each U.S. state. We removed entries that indicated that the attraction/place was not a tourist trap, e.g., if the review contained word combinations such as ‘not a trap,’ ‘not a tourist trap,’ ‘not tourist trap,’ ‘not trap,’ ‘wasn’t a trap’ etc.
For our world analysis, we set a minimum threshold of 10 mentions of the phrase ‘tourist trap.’ For each country and U.S. state, the threshold was set at five or more mentions.
Please note that tourist traps can refer to a range of experiences and impressions about a place, including how it looks, where it’s located, the general atmosphere or the style of the service. Not all mentions of ‘tourist trap’ necessarily equate to a poor experience from the person who reviewed the attraction.
The data was collected in January 2023.
This article originally appeared on Casago and was syndicated by MediaFeed.
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