These attractions in Missouri and Kansas landed on a Top 100 ‘tourist trap’ list

Joseph Hernandez
·1 min read
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A recent USA Today study named the top 100 biggest “tourist trap” destinations on planet Earth.

It located two of them in Missouri and Kansas.

According to the study, the Titanic Museum in Branson, Missouri, and the Oz Museum in Wamego, Kansas, are among the top 100 tourist traps in the world. The Titanic Museum came in at No. 33, while the Oz Museum finished No. 80.

Branson’s Titanic Museum.
Branson’s Titanic Museum.

USA Today analyzed 23.2 million Google reviews of the 500 most popular tourist attractions in the world, looking at 65 countries in six continents. For each attraction, they looked at how many reviews mentioned the terms “tourist trap,” “overrated” or “expensive.”

The Titanic Museum had 17,354 reviews and the terms showed up at a frequency of 21%. The terms showed up at a frequency of 10% for the Oz Museum’s 2,075 reviews.

Visitors flock to the Oz Museum in Wamego, Kan.
Visitors flock to the Oz Museum in Wamego, Kan.

According to the study, the top five “tourist traps” in the world are the Four Corners Monument in Teec Nos Pos, Arizona, the Salem Witch Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, the Calico Ghost Town in California, Crazy Horse Memorial in Crazy Horse, South Dakota and the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, New Mexico.

Eight of the top 10 tourist traps in the world are in the United States.

What is a tourist trap?

According to Merriam-Webster, a tourist trap is a place that attracts and exploits tourists. Financial and business news website Insider said you can identify a tourist trap by:

  • Seeing if a place is overcrowded

  • Looking at how often the destination pops up on social media

  • If the landmark has its own hashtag on social media

  • If the location has a gift shop or the restaurant has expensive items