Touristy and tourist

I generally avoid this subject because I think it is silly and maybe even a little narrow minded. Everyplace is a tourist place. And the vast majority of people in major tourist areas are tourists. American tourist may be in the minority because many, many Europeans are tourists also. Also, I think there are many myths surrounding the idea of "too touristy." The big one - if the menu is in English, run away. Obviously restaurants and shop next to major tourist sites will be overrun by tourists because it is convenient. So when I see that question, I generally ignore it assuming that the poster really doesn't understand the situation. But they will learn from experience. If you don't want places that are too touristy, then don't go where tourists go. Simply.

Here's a couple of previous posts on the subject. Since the second one was also posted by you I assume you have not received a satisfactory answer to your query. I guess I'm not sure what type of response you are expecting.

As Frank says, we are all tourists and if we go where other tourists go (which most of us do) then we are going to touristy places.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/general-europe/a-few-thoughts-on

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/general-europe/tourist-touristy

Nancy--please excuse my senior moment, having forgotten that I had dealt with this before. I still find it interesting, however.

Firstly, I consider myself a tourist when in Europe (because duh...I am). I'm happy to share the sights of Europe with many other people. If it weren't for the volumes of people who have admired these great creations over the centuries they might not be so well preserved today...and so that makes me grateful for tourists and tourism.

There is a way to be a good tourist and ways to be an "annoying" tourist. This is true if you are in Orlando Florida, New York City, Venice or Rome.

A place is "touristy" to me if it has more cruise boat or tour bus visitors each day than permanent residents. A lot of places (including some of my favorites) qualify.

If every shop in town sells cheap cheesy junk rather than local food, and local hand made wares it starts to lose its appeal for me.

A place becomes "too touristy" to me if its so crowded with people and junk that I can't move or enjoy the sights anymore. If this happens I cut my losses and go somewhere else.

Are touristy places bad places to visit? Nope not always...there's probably a darn good reason so many people go there! I can enjoy people watching and enjoy my surroundings even standing in a long line of tourists.

Is it nicer to visit a less crowded place? Absolutely.

Are other tourists annoying? Sometimes. I was almost knocked unconscious on a train in Germany by a large hard shell suitcase that was placed unsecured on an overhead rack by another tourist. As soon as the train departed it went whizzing off the metal rack and right at me...I got zero apologies from the other traveler, a nearly busted head and a broken laptop out of the ordeal). But sometimes other travelers can be really helpful and fun to spend time with too! We enjoyed meeting another couple in Napoli Centrale station who were traveling the same RS route to Pompeii, and we had an even more enjoyable time with a lady doing her laundry at a laundromat in Venice.

The people who give "tourists" a bad name come from all parts of the globe and are either 1 - stressed out and traveling unprepared/overloaded/exhausted ... OR 2 - just live their lives without respect for others in general.

Traveling is like putting a magnifying glass on life. Your bound to see the best and worst of people along the way. Enjoy the good, forget the bad and your travels will be much happier.

"if the menu is in English, run away."

We have been going to a resto in a small village outside Sorrento over the last 30 or so years. Have seen it change from a straw roofed beachside tratt to a Michelin star place. This is down to the son of the family who we watched grow up. If I applied the above rule I would not eat there because they offer an English language menu. It is a service they offer to make life easier for their non-Italian speaking customers.

This seems to be another renewal of a topic fairly recently discussed.

I really like Backtoitaly's list. Many places we want to visit will be packed with tourists.

In my mind many places that we call touristy in Europe don't even begin to measure up to touristy sites in the US. When I compare The Dells in Wisconsin, Gatlinburg in Tennessee, or even Times Square to The Royal Mile in Edinburgh--the navel of tartan tat--or to Drumnadrochit--the focal point for all things Nessie--I find that we in the US far surpass anything that the Scots can do. :)

Like all good New Yorkers I know to avoid Times Square unless need be. We all scurry around below in the subway station and never come up to see hordes. But if you want good people watching, boy it would be hard to beat Times Square. And if you want to see some excellent theatre, you'll likely go through Times Square and you surely would not forego the theatre because TS is so touristy.

Pam

It's certainly true that when we do what is discussed on this forum we are tourists. I'm going to Rome next trip, and I will be visiting the forum, the colosseum, and the sistine chapel. Touristy? Absolutely, if you use the obvious definition of being full of tourists (i.e. people from other places who go somewhere different to explore it). These places are famous for a reason, and everyone wants to see them. So, touristy.

But I think there is a different definition people use when using the word "touristy". It has a connotation of being sub-par, tacky, inauthentic, and existing to rip off visitors with little given in return. Maybe there should be a new word for this, but for now people seem to use "touristy". So, using North American example I'm familiar with - The Empire State Building observation deck is full of tourists, but doesn't fit the other connotation of "touristy". The guys in superhero costumes who demand money for their photos in Times Square? Touristy. Of course, it's all in the eye of the beholder. "Touristy" things can be fun, famous tourist filled landmarks are almost always worth visiting despite their popularity, but it is also nice to do your best to get off the beaten path to find something a little more local. The first time I visited Venice (day trip, group tour, college), I HATED it. Too crowded, packed with tourists, I couldn't really enjoy it. Second time, I liked it quite a bit. Still not my favorite city, but after doing the "required" sights of St. Marks, Rialto bridge, etc, I spent the remaining time wandering back canals. While all of venice is heavy on the tourists, finding places away from the crowds where you can more easily feel the spirit of the place is important too.

As the great American philosopher Yogi Berra once said, "Nobody goes there any more. It's too crowded."

I tend to avoid situations where I feel manipulated and out of control. I guess that's what "touristy" means to me, and I've been on enough cruise ship shore excursions to know that I don't like that feeling any more.

Like another poster above, history and culture mean more to me than "attractions". I can tolerate crowds more at a historical site (Colosseum, for example) than I can at a museum. I can always find a high-res reproduction of Mona Lisa on the internet, but there is only one Flavian Amphitheater. Neuschwanstein is pretty, but of marginal historic significance; and I'd rather spend time in a relatively-unknown Bavarian lakeside resort village where the only "tourists" are Germans on weekend holiday.

Often sites of great historical significance in a particular area are not the most popular tourist attractions. I enjoy doing the research before my trip and seeking out those places that are not on every tour bus route.

And of course, whether a particular place is "touristy" may only be a function of the time of day. Examples:
Touristy (1 PM)
Not touristy (7 AM)

Jeff, that's why we like to get up early to see the sights! Great pictures.

Joan, I remember someone asked this same question last year and it turns out it was you. If you want to read the posts from that question, the link is below:

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/general-europe/tourist-touristy

Laura, that link was already posted in the 2nd response above and Joan already responded to it.

Several years ago, there were a few posters who proudly declared themselves "travelers not tourists" who enjoyed "authentic culture" and "going off the beaten path" to hidden, virtually unpublicized gems like the Eifel Tower, Louvre, Rothenburg, the Coliseum, etc. I wonder what happened to them?

I must admit I have to laugh at Trip Advisor reviews when people review a town in Cinque Terre and they denigrate it as having too many tourists after telling every one they arrived for the day off a tour boat docked in La Spezia on trains that packed them in like sardines. Seriously, is there really any self-awareness at all?

We are tourists. We all tour differently in ways that are comfortable for us. We all seek different experiences from our trips. We all value certain experiences differently. There are ways that people travel that just simply would not work for me as I am sure there are ways I prefer to travel that would not work for others.

I use the term touristy to describe places that seem to be run solely as a tourist attraction.

Some places may be regularly crowded with tourists but I don't think of them as touristy - Vatican Museum, the Hermitage and the Louvre are examples. These are always crowded but they contain genuine treasures you shouldn't miss the chance to see.

Other places are touristy but may be worth seeing once. Blarney and Neuschwanstein castles and Leaning Tower of Pisa come to mind. They're good sights, in many ways iconic. After visiting once, however, you're not likely to fight the crowds to visit again.

When I say something is "touristy" I mean my perception is that the place has proportionately way too many shops, restaurants and services clearly meant only for tourists.

For instance, in the Old City of Jerusalem, there are streets close to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre that sell religious souvenirs. For me, this is not touristy because there are many quality goods as well as some cheap trinkets and I understand that while casual tourists may want a memento, most of the sales are to the many, many religious pilgrims who want a sacred object to treasure for a lifetime. A few blocks away is one of the most touristy places on earth - the main drag, which is lined with shops selling nothing but mass-produced souvenirs to tourists.

I can't remember any restaurant in Israel that doesn't have a menu in English and most of their business comes from locals. But when I'm in Europe and I see a menu in 4 or 5 languages, opposite a top tourist site, I figure they don't have a lot of repeat customers, so they probably aren't aiming for quality. The unprepossessing places in the side streets probably depend on local repeat business. You can tell whether the chocolate shop or bakery is looking mainly for tourist business by what they're selling. If it's mainly boxes with pictures of the cathedral or the palace, it's touristy.

So when I say I preferred Ghent to Bruges, because Bruges was much more touristy, I don't mean there were more tourists in sight. I mean that the historic center was filled with souvenir shops and souvenir chocolate shops, and the traffic was tied up because of all the horse-pulled carriages (boy are they noisy).

Tom, they are now living like locals somewhere.

"Tourist" is either you or I. "Touristy" is when you and I are both at the same place.

I remember reading one young travel blogger who considered herself a "traveler and not a tourist." She suggested everyone skip Rome because it has too many "tourists."

Harumph!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN99jshaQbY

In my mind there are two types of 'touristy' places -- those like Venice and Rome who draw many visitors because they represent some of the crowning achievements of human history, and those that are 'manufactured' to draw in more tourists and tourist money (examples may be Blarney Castle or the Loch Ness 'monster' attractions. Examples of the first type warrant enduring some crowds, while examples of the second type don't (but still may be fun if the crowds are thin). For example, I actually enjoy the London Dungeon and similar attractions -- I just wouldn't waste two hours or so in a queue.

Those super-posters here in the forum who see through the pretense of those who put on the airs of 'traveler' and sniff at things touristy are themselves still playing the game of one-upmanship. (As am I by calling it out.)

The fact is that here in San Francisco there is Chinatown for tourists, roughly Grant Ave from Washington to Pacific, and Chinatown for people who have something to do besides stroll and look for trinkets, be it shopping or be it worship or be it plotting the counterrevolution. This latter Chinatown has a lot of physical overlap with the tourist Chinatown but it is not identical. Travelers can connect with the real Chinatown but they can't completely escape their own otherness. Tourists don't even try, and don't conceive of what they are doing in those terms. That doesn't mean that we (travelers) can't or shouldn't distinguish what we're aspiring to do from what tourists are doing. There is a retiree who volunteers occasionally for the SF City Guides to give walking tours that start in Portsmouth Square. He attended high school here 50+ years ago and tells people on the tour how the nuns/teachers would oversee the yard during recess to make sure no one spoke anything other than English. Everyone used their 'American' first names, and wanted to -- assimilation wasn't just prudent, it was a value everyone valorized. That, too, is part of the real Chinatown. From that POV, the gate and the decor and the dressing up is touristy. Today's high-schoolers, who during lunar new year a few weeks ago, went from door to door with noisemakers and paper dragons to raise money for local charity / extort protection money for local associations (impossible to disentangle the two) are part of the real Chinatown, but tourists taking snapshots of them doing so, who don't know what's actually going on, are having a touristy experience. The shopowners are engaging the real Chinatown.

A simpler example: Waikiki is touristy, but but real Hawaiians (not employed in tourist industry, either) often use the beaches of Waikiki. Honolulu's Chinatown is a real Chinatown, but many tourists take the small sidetrack from Waikiki and spend some money and time in Chinatown. It does not follow that we can't / shouldn't judge Waikiki as fake or lesser by calling it touristy.
This is, I think, what RS has in mind when he downplays Malaga and St. Tropez, etc. There's plenty that I enjoy there, but I'm not going to claim that they aren't, overall, touristy.

Keith, it is meaningless. Sounds like Deepak-Chopra-speak to me.

I took my 'otherness' to Europe with me last year. She got along just fine although she is a little 'touristy'.

I don't think I've ever had the urge to escape my otherness. Wouldn't that imply some kind of discontent?!
Anyway, I do think we are all tourists/travelers/visitors when vacationing. When someone says touristy, to me that means a location/attraction much like Madame Tussauds.

"When someone says touristy, to me that means a location/attraction much like Madame Tussauds."

I was thinking something similar. To me "touristy" means it's phony or not really related to the historical significance of the location - something that could really be anywhere. It's just there to extract money from the "tourist".

In Rothenburg, the Christmas Shop and the C&P Museum are touristy. (OK, the punishment means shown in the C&P Museum are out of Rothenburg's time period, but it's hardly unique to Rothenburg. There's one in London, too.) But walking the wall, observing the defenses, particularly how they fortified the gates - I don't consider that touristy.

Oktoberfest is touristy.

To me, the epitome of touristy is riding around in a van in Salzburg, singing "Do, a deer" and visiting places that had nothing, or very little, to do with SOM. You could just a well do that in Hollywood, where perhaps half the movie was actually filmed.

Wow, Norma. That Deepak-Chopra-speak jab landed on a sensitive spot. Ouch. I’ve been wondering why RS chooses to play dumb as often as he does; maybe you’re teaching me.

I try to imagine what those on the dealing end of anti-intellectualism are doing – discouraging elitism? Equating authenticity with the middlebrow? But I try to distinguish class from education, saving my ire for the nobs not for the dons. Here on the receiving end it seems narrow and defensive. I’m not raising my chin and looking down my nose at ‘mere tourists’ – I really do believe that what tourists are doing is not as good as what travelers are doing. So why try to knock me down a peg? Does the auto mechanic need correction for presuming that he knows more about what’s going on under the hood than the owner who has been driving for decades?

This is the drift of several of Pacific Northwest Kent’s comments. “A traveler .. secretly thinks they’re more knowledgeable, just a bit more sophisticated, than the rest of us”, lacking savoir-faire. Are all travelers who think thusly mistaken? Is there no room for expertise?

I understand that it’s not rare to run into experts who use their position as a club to put others down or a spotlight to show themselves off, but that doesn’t invalidate all expertise. Plenty of people use their gifts and accomplishments for good.

Which brings us back to RS, and to UK Keith’s question about escaping otherness. RS carefully calls this ‘becoming a temporary local.’ Tea in England, late dinners in Spain, etc. I’m trying to take the OP topic and get beyond Madame Tussaud’s and Oktoberfest (good examples, obviously) and apply the touristy/traveler distinction to the relationship between the people involved. I cannot be a local in Chinatown, but that doesn’t mean I can’t try to get past waving back at the buskers in cartoon-character costumes as the hop-on-hop-off bus goes by. I can lean towards, as RS says, joining the party rather than just the economy. And that makes me better than the tourist who doesn’t consider the possibility that this isn’t a theme park here for her entertainment.

Maryam in DC: travelers aspiring to become temporary locals aren’t implying some kind of discontent – they are making it explicit. I’m comfortable with the condition of having more to learn, and I don’t go elsewhere to have my beliefs confirmed but to have them challenged and expanded. People tend to find what they are looking for, and I resist that tendency deliberately.

Two postscripts: 1) I do apologize for using ‘otherness’. It is current humanities patois and my preference would be closer to the semantic field around ‘essentialism’, which I fear would go over many people’s heads. B) An English professor years back liked to tell students that ‘boring’ is not a description properly applied to a book but a description of the relationship a reader engages in with a book, and that readers have the power to remake that relationship. I think this applies to the touristy/traveler topic, and deserves to brought out further. I’ve had touristy days, but I’m not sure that I can put all the blame on Madame Tussaud and consider myself spotless.

Here we are, still working on the traveler/tourist nomenclature.
It seems that for a "traveler" to be called a "tourist" is somewhat akin to calling a nicely dressed woman a slut.
Perhaps we should introduce a new title, such as a traveling tourist or a touring traveler.

Maryam, now this is a line I love:

I don't think I've ever had the urge to escape my otherness.

And aviros, as I was admiring the above line I thought, my otherness is my essence, right with you there. No need or desire to be without that! Wow, now we're in the weeds! ;-)

This is just another of those threads.

Isn't "escaping our otherness" the point of travel, to some extent? Maybe I'm misunderstanding the phrase, but when we go to a new place we are "outsiders", unfamiliar with the locale, and attempt to shed a small bit of that confusion by learning about the culture of the place we are visiting. So my favorite country to visit is Spain. I am not Spanish, but when visiting I eat dinner at 10, try to speak Spanish (badly, but I try), and generally try to temporarily shed some of my "otherness". If I didn't, I'd be eating at 7, expecting ice everywhere, getting annoyed at siesta closings, trying to find a restaurant serving Italian-American food, and not even trying anything but English. I don't think any of us RS fans travel like that, and I see the whole "temporary local" thing as a shedding of otherness. To me it doesn't imply discontent with who I am, but a broadening. I'm American, I travel, I aim to learn and be culturally flexible. When in Rome...

Avirose, I am trying to understand your concept of expertise. I am probably going to be annoyed with myself for continuing with this discussion but I will bite. What sort of expertise do travelers possess, as opposed to tourists? Anyone with an ability to recall information can become on expert on the nuts and bolts of travel (learning a language, how a metro system works, what days museums or closed, to give some examples) regardless of his or her preferred style of travel. As far as being an expert on experiencing a culture/escaping your otherness/losing your essence- that is all very personal. There is no way someone can be an expert on my otherness or how I escape it or find it.

I bet that most people that travel, certainly most people on these forums, want the "living as a temporary local" experience, albeit to varying degrees. I have had those experiences. I have also taken the Sound of Music tour in Salzburg, kissed the Blarney Stone, been to Madam Tussaud's, and taken multiple HOHO tours. And I they were all great memories with friends and family. And sometimes I made new friends. Sometimes, I just do things because they are fun.

I usually stay away from this topic because I agree with those who find it elitist. People should be able to cultivate their own travel styles as long as them remain polite and respectful.

EDIT: Actually, I found hanging in the air and kissing the Blarney Stone to be quite terrifying. But other than that 5 seconds, it was a good day.

Chicago Kristen is a good instance of what I would call the borderline case (smiley face) but before I go into that, let me summarize the story so far:

We're applying the term 'touristy' triply -- first to places, to distinguish them from 'local' or perhaps 'authentic'; second to people, to distinguish them from 'travelers'; third to interactions/relations/behavior, to distinguish them from 'becoming a temporary local' (which I unhelpfully called escaping otherness [which I intended slightly differently but close enough for a discussion board]).

The first application seems to have a fair amount of agreement -- wax museums and costumed street buskers are touristy, while some places that are crowded with tourists are not necessarily touristy because they are legitimate -- they belong in the landscape and have some merit separate from a desire to earn money from tourists. We seem to agree that the Louvre and the Tower of London are ok even though they're full of tourists. But not all of us agree, thinking that anyplace crowded with tourists and/or depending on tourists is touristy. (This fuzziness is part of why I want to explore the third application.)

The second application is more controversial. Is it a way for people to feed their own egos and sound special, as our Pacific Northwesterner suspects? George Carlin sums this up in A Place For My Stuff by pointing out that my own sht is stuff while *your stuff is sh*t. (smiley face) Or is there a useful distinction to be made, saving 'tourist' for the Ugly American and 'traveler' for the RS-coached-and-approved respectful, adaptable tripper? I think it is useful. RS looks down on the northern Europeans who flock to the Mediterranean coast solely for the weather and try to recreate their homes in every other way, like in Gibraltar or along the Promenade Anglais in Nice, and I think it is good to look down on this -- those people are touristy. For them, anyplace sunny and warm will do. Ditto for the adventure tripper who is looking for the tallest waves or highest peaks or darkest caves regardless of whether the outfitter they're paying is an angel or has blood on his hands. Ditto, too, for the person competing to take the best selfie. (This one time, a docent and I at the Asian Art Museum were discussing items in a Tibetan display case by talking about cities we had visited in western China, when a fidgety but well-preserved retiree standing nearby blurted out, "Yes, but have you been to Dubai?" She had been there last year. It was a total non-sequitor, but she couldn't bear the idea that we'd been to exotic places that she hadn't. That was touristy.)
RS clearly brings this out whenever he plays a segment on the radio program from his friend the bicycle traveler. Those stories often hinge on distinguishing the traveler from the tourist.

The third application is a further wrinkle that I want to explore, because I think it takes two to tango. Plus a dance floor. The same person can have a touristy experience one day and a traveler's encounter the next depending on the mindset and mood he brings to bear, and the very same spot can be eye-rollingly touristy for one person and the experience of a lifetime for the person standing three feet away. Sometimes it's alcohol that makes the difference. (smiley face) The engagement determines the character of the experience. Kristen has had good fun enjoying touristy places with touristy people by engaging as a traveler. She's our crossover case, proving that the verb is just as important as the subject and the object of the sentence. Ban the tourist / Ugly American from your brain and your heart, and you can travel authentically everywhere all the time.

Tourism is as tourism does.

if I visit a tourist site in my own city what do I get called?
What is a tourist site.
If I visit friends in another country am I a traveller , a tourist or just a visitor.

I am surprised Oktoberfest keeps being called touristy. Less than 20% of Oktoberfest visitors are from outside Germany and 70% of them are locals. When I sit at an Oktoberfest table with friends and family, as I’ve done for years, in my own city, I don’t feel like I’m being a tourist or doing something touristy.

I was last at the Oktoberfest 20+ years ago, but was with my German Girlfriend and some of her friends from Munich, was I a tourist doing a touristy thing or was I just someone out with their friends for a day out.
The Edinburgh Festival fringe in my own city would be considered very touristy by many but many of us locals enjoy that time of year in t he city and partake of the various shows and events going on during that tine. Are we tourists in our own city?
I am off to Prague in May for the beer festival there and also the world Ice Hockey championship meeting up with friends that live in the city, if I am visiting a specific event be it a drinking one or a sporting one am I a tourist id I go on my own and a visitor if I go with my friends or am I a guy who just likes to travel and enjoy whatever there is to offer in the places I visit.

to OP

I can't define touristy, but I know it when I see it.

I am a traveler. Currently I am travelling and exploring the milky way. I advise against it. You should see all the damn people!!! Everyone wants to see the pillars of creation. A few billion yeArs ago, it was nice and quiet. :(

Depression set in as I now realize I am a tourist not a traveler, and visit touristy attractions rather than non-touristy places . Session with a therapist shortly.

I need a glass of wine.

Perhaps it's already been said, but I can be a tourist in my own home town (let alone Europe), and visit touristy places there too! I'm not scared.....

Who cares!

I am a traveler in my own city.

I just read an article on the CNN website about Venice.

"On a busy summer day, tourists outnumber Venetians 600-1."

I would call that touristy.

I think the article must mean in just parts of Venice. It also says that the population of Venice is 60,000, so 60,000 x 600 would be 36 million tourists. (No wonder Venice is sinking!)

Ha. Those numbers make it sound like there are 36 million tourists there on a single summer day. That's more than the annual number of tourists to Venice (approx 21 million). Average number of tourists on any one day, including cruise ship tourists, is around 60,000.

That's why I added "in parts of Venice". I'm sure most Venetian don't live in the areas of high tourist populations. Still, if you are one of those area, 600:1 makes it pretty hard to experience the "real" Venice.