US Cities Overlooked by Foreign Tourists

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by destroycreate

As many others have said, here's my breakdown anectodally and having lived in Europe where I often heard presumptions about America.


2. Philly/NoLa - Specifically for NoLa, I just haven't met any Europeans who really know anything about it. Plus, most Europeans despise the South based on what they hear/learn from the media.

Yes, most Europeans despise the history of racist culture in the South/US that they created and profited mightily off of for centuries.

[Crawford]

Re. San Diego and New Orleans, totally anecdotal, but I always see lots of foreign tourists in both places. San Diego seems kinda obvious, with Sea World, Legoland, Zoo/Wild Animal Park, great beaches, and the general allure of Southern CA.

In New Orleans, I'm always hearing German, French, British English, etc. in the French Quarter. No, it doesn't have tourist numbers like NYC, but it's a small, out-of-the way city with a minor airport. It seems to do very well relative to size and location. If anything, NOLA seems like one of those cities that is kinda choking on tourism/convention trade, kinda like a Venice, Florence or Salzburg. You don't meet too many locals, and there doesn't seem to be much going on outside of tourism.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Crawford

In New Orleans, I'm always hearing German, French, British English, etc. in the French Quarter. No, it doesn't have tourist numbers like NYC, but it's a small, out-of-the way city with a minor airport. It seems to do very well relative to size and location. If anything, NOLA seems like one of those cities that is kinda choking on tourism/convention trade, kinda like a Venice, Florence or Salzburg. You don't meet too many locals, and there doesn't seem to be much going on outside of tourism.

I lived in New Orleans for 3+ years and constantly met and noticed European tourists.

[Emprise du Lion]

Originally Posted by Shawn

Chicago does poorly in my part of the world, because 1. Illinois doesn't prioritize promoting Chicago over the rest of the state, and 2. since most of this target audience already lives in big cities, "why would I fly half way across the world to visit Big City Not New York?" LA offers a drastically different experience as an East Asian tourist than New York does; Chicago simply doesn't. There's no definitive hook. Nagoya suffers from the same predicament in Japan.

Now I'm curious as to what exactly Illinois is promoting. Beyond Chicago there's the Shawnee National Forest and the Great River Road. End of list for scenic stuff. The rest of the state is majority cornfields, flat, and small cities and suburbs.

[galleyfox]

Originally Posted by Emprise du Lion

Now I'm curious as to what exactly Illinois is promoting. Beyond Chicago there's the Shawnee National Forest and the Great River Road. End of list for scenic stuff. The rest of the state is majority cornfields, flat, and small cities and suburbs.

Route 66, Americana, Abraham Lincoln, Chicago

I suppose they try their best with what they’ve been given

https://youtu.be/Q4hlwJtXrS0
https://youtu.be/H-NAx4KKH8E
https://youtu.be/sT2LqHuFOH8
https://youtu.be/0Undw-Abfig

[BG918]

I would think New Mexico would be more popular for foreign visitors. The culture is a unique blend of Southwest Indian and Spanish and the Adobe architecture is totally unique to that part of the world. They also have one of the best regional cuisines in the US, up there with other uniquely American cuisines like Cajun, Low Country and BBQ.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by galleyfox

Route 66, Americana, Abraham Lincoln, Chicago

I suppose they try their best with what they’ve been given

https://youtu.be/Q4hlwJtXrS0
https://youtu.be/H-NAx4KKH8E
https://youtu.be/sT2LqHuFOH8
https://youtu.be/0Undw-Abfig

Yeah this is kind of ridiculous. All of these should be made into easy side trips from Chicago. But even Starved Rock, barely outside the metro area, is inaccessible without renting a car, as this hapless British Karen found out:

https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopi..._Illinois.html

If we had a sensible tourist infrastructure, there should be buses going down Route 66/to Starved Rock/the Indiana Dunes/Galena/whatever lined up by the Art Institute. Tourists don't want to figure out these logistics...



edit: one more thing. I remember at Stanford and MIT, there were busloads of Asian tourists taking tours of campus for some reason (like, literally photographing us walking to class or whatever). I haven't seen the same thing at UChicago. I have no idea what tourist market this is but it's something Chicago could probably try to capitalize on, between UChicago, Northwestern and (a bit farther afield) Notre Dame.

[SFBruin]

Chicago is definitely overlooked domestically as a travel destination.

It is the third largest city (realistically with the second or third largest core), has a great transit system, world class museums, distinctive food and is far more affordable than New York or LA.

I don't know about internationally, but I could see it's being a similar situation.

[Omaharocks]

Originally Posted by BG918

I would think New Mexico would be more popular for foreign visitors. The culture is a unique blend of Southwest Indian and Spanish and the Adobe architecture is totally unique to that part of the world. They also have one of the best regional cuisines in the US, up there with other uniquely American cuisines like Cajun, Low Country and BBQ.

Yeah, not even many in the U.S. have a good grasp on New Mexico. Primarily because it's way out of the way - especially the culturally unique areas in the middle and northern parts of the state.

Santa Fe, the primary tourist draw, is too small for easy airport access, and Albuquerque is expensive to fly to relative to other southwest metros like Phoenix and Vegas. Santa Fe does tend to get a lot of tourism from the U.S. and Mexico.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by Omaharocks

Yeah, not even many in the U.S. have a good grasp on New Mexico. Primarily because it's way out of the way - especially the culturally unique areas in the middle and northern parts of the state.

Santa Fe, the primary tourist draw, is too small for easy airport access, and Albuquerque is expensive to fly to relative to other southwest metros like Phoenix and Vegas. Santa Fe does tend to get a lot of tourism from the U.S. and Mexico.

yeah, some of its destinations are overly kitschy too (Roswell). Carlsbad outside of the caverns is not a great place to visit either (I've spent integrated months there for work). Ruidoso is nice but has anybody heard of it?

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by pj3000

Yes, most Europeans despise the history of racist culture in the South/US that they created and profited mightily off of for centuries.

This post garners sufficient points to totally redeem its author. I'm even beginning to look for his posts as being more entertaining, even insightful, than the average here.

[Will O' Wisp]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Re. San Diego and New Orleans, totally anecdotal, but I always see lots of foreign tourists in both places. San Diego seems kinda obvious, with Sea World, Legoland, Zoo/Wild Animal Park, great beaches, and the general allure of Southern CA.

I can speak slightly less anecdotally on San Diego, since my job involves looking at these numbers direct. Historically San Diego has done well with domestic tourism but poorly internationally. For the last year I have data on (2018), only 17% of visitors were international and 76% of those were from Mexico. Only 3.9% of SD's tourists were from overseas, the largest contingent being from the UK.

The Zoo and the theme parks are good domestic draws, but they tend to fall flat internationally when stacked up against Disneyland, Universal Studios, or the Hollywood Walk of Fame. SD's overseas tourist advertising doesn't focus on them heavily. SD's "brand" is mainly focused on the beaches and beach culture, sort of like a more outdoorsy LA. More recently we've been trying to play up a bit of an urban vibe as well with Gaslamp and PB, the idea being you can get the beach experience and big city fun in the same place.

People tend to discount just how much media drives international tourism. If your city isn't appearing in TV, movies, books etc (and importantly, as itself instead of some generic backdrop) no amount of advertising is going draw people in. Which is why you're going to be seeing a lot more glory shots of San Diego in Top Gun 2....

[muppet]

Regions all over the world are overlooked, usually due to nearby competition, or sheer volume of choice. In a way the US pales in comparison:

https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...&postcount=403

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Will O' Wisp

I can speak slightly less anecdotally on San Diego, since my job involves looking at these numbers direct. Historically San Diego has done well with domestic tourism but poorly internationally. For the last year I have data on (2018), only 17% of visitors were international and 76% of those were from Mexico. Only 3.9% of SD's tourists were from overseas, the largest contingent being from the UK.

The Zoo and the theme parks are good domestic draws, but they tend to fall flat internationally when stacked up against Disneyland, Universal Studios, or the Hollywood Walk of Fame. SD's overseas tourist advertising doesn't focus on them heavily. SD's "brand" is mainly focused on the beaches and beach culture, sort of like a more outdoorsy LA. More recently we've been trying to play up a bit of an urban vibe as well with Gaslamp and PB, the idea being you can get the beach experience and big city fun in the same place.

People tend to discount just how much media drives international tourism. If your city isn't appearing in TV, movies, books etc (and importantly, as itself instead of some generic backdrop) no amount of advertising is going draw people in. Which is why you're going to be seeing a lot more glory shots of San Diego in Top Gun 2....

San Diego is THE American beach for much of the Southwest. The alternative is Mexican beaches but not everybody is prepared to deal with paying bribes to local Mexican cops along the route, getting Mexican insurance and so on. So they go to San Diego.

[10023]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

America has done cities as well as most since WW II. Your last point is the only valid one: It's hard for a city less than 100 years old (other than perhaps an older native American settlement) to compete with one 2000 years old. But if you look at European cities that were pretty much wiped off the map and rebuilt after WW II, they aren't very attractive (unless the old was rebuilt as it was).

Even where the old was rebuilt poorly, they are better than American cities in urban form. I can’t think of any where the slate was wiped completely and they were rebuilt from scratch, not even Frankfurt (which is on no tourist’s list anyway).

[ue]

For most Canadians, the American cities on their radar are the obvious ones like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami, possibly DC too. And then the Sun Belt destinations which are basically Palm Springs, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Orlando, Tampa, and (in Eastern Canada) Myrtle Beach. And then if there's a large American city within 8hrs of where you live, it tends to figure highly as well. So Seattle (and somewhat Portland) in Southern BC, Minneapolis in Manitoba/NW Ontario, Great Lakes cities (eg Buffalo, Detroit) + NYC and Boston if you live in Southern Ontario, Boston and NYC in Quebec or the Maritimes. Seattle also tends to figure highly in Alberta/Saskatchewan (in the absence of a close large city in Montana or North Dakota) due to the popularity of BC travel and it not being far off from Vancouver. Chicago is also fairly on the radar if you live in Winnipeg or Toronto.

[10023]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

I think this is debatable..american cities have a ton of variety. and people aren't visiting Italy or Germany to go to Milan or Frankfurt, they go to Florence, Rome, Nice, Berlin, etc where the weather is nice and there is a lot to do.

If Chicago was in Europe it would be the #1 city. (or at least competitive with London and Paris)

Are you implying that Berlin has nicer weather than Milan? Berlin’s weather is basically Chicago weather.

Visiting cities has got almost nothing to do with weather. In fact in places with “nice” weather like Spain and Italy, it’s too damn hot to be in a city during the peak summer travel season and the locals have all left. Tourists are going places that are unique or atmospheric, have “bucket list” level landmarks, or interesting historical sites.

I would personally argue that Chicago ticks those boxes, and anecdotally I think it scores very well on the “pleasantly surprised” scale. I know so many Europeans who have gone for work and come back thinking at least, “yeah I could live there” (at least if they visited in the summer). But it doesn’t have a huge profile.

The other problem is that America is big, and even within regions poorly connected by rail, so it’s harder for foreign tourists to create an itinerary that takes them to multiple cities. That’s a big knock on Chicago - there is absolutely nothing of any interest to a visitor beyond about the inner 1/2 of the city limits for the next several hundred miles.

[10023]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

ok fine , costa del sol or wherever the brits all hang out in southern spain

That is basically the equivalent of going to Florida. It’s where you go if you want warm but have no interest in culture or really the experience of travel at all. So a certain social class in the UK (with varying degrees of money) will definitely go.

However, the equivalent of Miami Beach would be places like Ibiza or Mykonos. Scorpios matches any club in South Beach in terms of douchebags blowing money, though the views are much better.

Or you can go to places like Formentera which are actually nice. I ended up spending a week on Elba this summer.

[Centropolis]

to speak of nearly fully developed american regions one can have culturral ownership in the european sense...les pays...hard to beat the greater and lesser bluegrass of kentucky. california has similar regions and i’m sure there are those i havent been to.

to be sure derby was weird this year but so it goes

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

San Diego is THE American beach for much of the Southwest. The alternative is Mexican beaches but not everybody is prepared to deal with paying bribes to local Mexican cops along the route, getting Mexican insurance and so on. So they go to San Diego.

Just out of curiosity, how cold is the water in Los Angeles?