Any traveller who says they’ve never experienced a disappointing or downright boring tourist destination is lying.
Why? Because it’s inevitable.
Thanks to the internet and social media, gone are the days of rocking up to a place knowing nothing about it or what it looks like.
Many places, especially tourist hotspots, look incredible on Instagram. Then, you get there and realise it’s a bit crap.
Sometimes, an experience colours your feelings towards a place. Like losing your luggage, getting food poisoning or being mugged.
Other times, rude locals or thousands of tourists get on your nerves.
In a now-viral Quora thread, travellers were asked: What is the most disappointing tourist destination you’ve ever visited?
The thread is quite long but makes for interesting reading. Because they didn’t hold back.
Here are 15 of the most disappointing tourist destinations, and why they made the list.
Top Comments
I've spent a lot of time and money travelling, and have been lucky enough to re-visit some of my favourite places - and what I soon learned was that the experience of a trip was only partly due to the destination itself. The age you are at, your travel companion, how you travel, who you meet, if you have someone to show you around, how much time you have, what budget you have - every single part of this shapes the experience and because of that I can never judge a place as is done in this survey.
And also - to include 'Brazil', a country almost as big as Australia and far more diverse as a blanket 'most disappointing place to travel too' tells me all I need to know about this survey - it's rubbish.
Every travel experience is subjective to the individual but from my experience Italy was completely overrated. I think I was so disappointed because it was a country I was so looking forward to visiting. It all just seemed a bit the same after a while. I went to Venice, Rome, Florence, Piza, Cinque Terre, including a road trip from Rome to Florence so we weren’t just hitting the tourist hotspots. We also traveled out of peak season. Full disclosure: I found out I was pregnant in Rome and had terrible
morning sickness and a strong aversion to Italian food so I’m sure that didn’t help either!
I didn’t enjoy LA the first time I visited but the 2nd time we had a car to get around in which meant we could discover so many wonderful spots and it has been completely redeemed.
The Louvre wasn’t my favourite (I’m a huge art fan) but I appreciated it for what it was. Musee D’Orsay was wonderful.
One of the only places that has been exactly what I was expecting and hoping for is New York City.
Disclosure: I've lived in Italy over years. With respect, your itinerary sounds pretty touristy and unless you had months to explore all those areas, you probably just skimmed the surface (that's a huge amount of locations to meaningfully discover in just a couple of weeks). But yeah, if you didn't enjoy the food, you missed out a huge part of the cultural life - that definitely wouldn't have helped!