tourist trap

n. a place set up to lure tourists in to spend money. (Can be a shop, a town, or a whole country.) It looked like a tourist trap, so we didn’t even stop the car.

See also: trap

References in periodicals archive ?

We're happy with our own company - but we like to see the real world where ordinary people live, not a purpose-built tourist trap.

World at his feet

Tony d'Avanzo has solved a problem at his Rolls Royce bed and breakfast in the Cotswold tourist trap of Bourton-on-the-Water--and next door's dog is as sick as the proverbial parrot

Doggone! Snowbird sausages cut waste

Ogden, Charles TOURIST TRAP (Edgar and Ellen Series, #2).

Ogden, Charles: Tourist trap (Edgar and Ellen Series, #2)

The site features "success story" occupations like camel husbandry, flower masseuse, clown "escorts," and silver-painted tourist trap standing still on a box performers.

'San Diego U-T' Launches Classified Help-Wanted Campaign

Under the smiling, sugarcoated tourist trap facade lies a complicated web of deceit, greed and murder.

Abbott, Wes. Dogby walks alone

Although Cuba was once a generous mixture of Europeans, West Africans and Chinese, today there remain only 300 pure Chinese and Chinatown has become a tourist trap.

Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival (11/24-28/04)

The name of which horse running today could also be: (a) a tourist trap in London (b) a hirsute fruit (c) a biography of Led Zeppelin (d) a less-than-warm spice (e) a sorcerous bit on the side?

FIVE FOR FUN

So far, the top-down planning model has produced what is at best a tourist trap, at worst an outright failure.

Poor, sexy Berlin: the failure of urban planning

A cardboard cutout of actress Angelina Jolie in her `Tomb Raider' costume appears to stand guard over the quiet town of Drain on Monday afternoon from the window of Betty's Tourist Trap store on First Street.

OREGON IMAGES

Molokai is still "paniolo [cowboy] country," retaining a Pacific ambiance and unspoiled nature: It's no tiki-tacky tourist trap.

Welcome to paradise

Frisco, or Vegas though it resembles Key West in a number of ways - land's end hangout, hideout, retreat, tourist trap, fisherman's domain, nature-lover's habitat, homosexual and homophobic mecca for weary city folks down there on a visit.

At Sea

I believe Birmingham would be well rid of this tinsel tourist trap.

Dreading annual Xmas Markets madness

TOURIST TRAP Z Staff didn't panic and managed to capture the snake in a box

Air crew find this snake on a plane BOA 747

But his predecessor on the island police force insisted that criticism of the investigation was a bid to protect the "bucket and spade image" of the tourist trap.

Ex-chief hits out

Developers reckon they could turn the infamous prison into a money-spinning tourist trap that would generate MILLIONS for the economy and THOUSANDS of jobs.