by We’ve all been tempted by glamorous photos of trendy destinations on social media and in the glossy pages of travel magazines.
But these overrated places don’t always live up to the hype.
The disappointment for some tourists who visit the City of Lights is so intense that they experience nausea, hallucinations and an increased heart rate, a condition known as Paris syndrome.
Paris it might be an obvious choice as an overrated destination, but it’s far from the only city that fails to meet visitors’ expectations.
Luggage network Radical Storage decided to take a look at 826,000 TripAdvisor reviews in 100 of the world’s most visited cities to find out which was the most disappointing.
Here’s what they found.
What have been the most disappointing vacation destinations?
Paris was knocked out of first place this year by Orlando in the US. It had the highest percentage of reviews where visitors felt “ripped off” and the highest number of comments about “rude” people.
Nearly one in five people mentioned how disappointing and underwhelming their vacation experience was. of America’theme park Capital’ suffered from reviews due to busy crowds and price hikes at Disney World and Universal in 2022.
In second place was Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, followed by Thai hotspot Pattaya.
Prague was the most disappointing with 3.9% of all reviews mentioning the word using it to describe the Czech capital.
The city most described as overrated was Da Nang in Vietnam, followed closely by Paris as the city lived up to the syndrome name.
Which destinations have visitors deemed “scams” or “rips”?
Orlando also tops the list of “rip” destinations with 6.3% of reviews mentioning the stage. Singapore had the highest percentage of reviews where tourists mentioned the bad value for money of the attractions on offer.
But when it came to scams, Marrakech in Morocco took the top spot, with more than one in ten reviews mentioning that the scams were all about this city.
These cities have exceeded travellers’ expectations
If you’re looking for a place that might surprise you, the study also looked at places travelers had more fun than they thought.
The top three destinations were all landlocked European cities – perhaps tourists have lower expectations for locations away from the beach?
Budapest was the city that pleasantly surprised according to reviews, followed by Brussels and Zurich.
Visitors to Budapest have mentioned the city’s stunning architecture and meandering river. Over 96% of the reviews examined by the study contained positive comments.
Brussels and Zurich came in only slightly below, with almost exactly 96% of reviews having something good to say about the city.
Penang, Malaysia was where tourists were most “pleasantly surprised” by what they found. Just over 2% of all reviews that mentioned this phrase used it to describe the destination.
