Perhaps this is what we call the price of fame. Despite its fame, despite the millions of tourists who come from all over the world, despite its majesty, despite Céline Dion and despite the idyllic setting offered by the Paris 2024 Olympics, the Eiffel Tower can still disappoint.
Yes, yes… As surprising as it may seem, the Eiffel Tower took third place in the ranking of the “worst tourist traps” in the world. Just that. In a study carried out by Preply, an online language learning platform, the “Iron Lady” ranked behind Time Square in New York (United States), and Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin (Germany).
The more we receive, the more we disappoint
But how did the monument, symbol of Paris and all of France, end up on this inglorious podium? Internet comments of course. To carry out the study in question, Preply analyzed a total of 81 popular tourist attractions around the world.
Then, using two review platforms, the company ranked attractions based on the total number of available reviews that mentioned the terms “tourist trap,” “disappointing” and “overrated” but specified that “only attractions with more than 1,000 reviews were included in the final ranking. » These terms come up 1,291 times on the Internet.
For example, the study cites a comment left on Google by a visitor: “One of the most overrated tourist attractions. You have to queue before you even get to the elevator queue, then there is another queue to get to the top. Trust me, the time and effort is not worth it. The Eiffel Tower is visible from almost anywhere in Paris.
The Louvre Museum also in the ranking
The Eiffel Tower is therefore a victim of its success… A characteristic that it shares with the winner of this ranking, the Time Square district which, according to the study, with its 330,000 visitors per day is a stressful experience and described as “overrated” , “disappointing” or “tourist trap”. When the former border post between West and East Berlin is considered too small…
If these comments seem a tad superficial, a quick look at those left on different sites shows that they apply to all tourist places. The ranking also cites the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen (Denmark), the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona (Spain) and the Colosseum in Rome (Italy). Another glorious French representative appears in the ranking in 12th position: The Louvre.
Optimists will, however, remember that out of the hundreds of thousands of comments available on the Internet, the very (very, very,…) vast majority of them are positive.
