There’s a brutal moment every seasoned traveler knows too well. You’ve just spent half your dining budget on a meal that tasted like it was microwaved in a broom closet, surrounded by other confused tourists doing the exact same thing. It’s not bad luck. It’s a pattern.
According to a study by online passport photo service provider PhotoAiD, the top three criteria that make a place a tourist trap are above-average pricing, amenities tailored for tourists, and a lack of cultural authenticity. These restaurants exist on every continent, in every major tourist city, and they all share one thing in common: a talent for separating you from your money before you even realize what happened. Here’s the list you actually needed before your next trip. Let’s dive in.
1. Hard Rock Cafe – Worldwide
Hard Rock Cafe is practically the poster child of the tourist restaurant phenomenon. The rock-and-roll memorabilia makes for a great background, but the food is mediocre. The menu consists of typical American cuisine that needs more creativity or punch, and high prices are more indicative of the tourist draw than the quality of ingredients or preparation. Honestly, you’re paying for a t-shirt and a photo opportunity, not a meal.
A widening reputation for having overpriced, mediocre food didn’t help the chain amidst the rise of foodie culture. Travelers across the globe have flagged it as one of the most consistent disappointments in the dining world. Reviews from locations like London’s Piccadilly Circus describe the food as “typically overpriced for a tourist trap area,” with menu items like the steak fajita described as poor, with meat that didn’t resemble a steak.
2. Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. – Times Square, New York
Times Square is packed with chain restaurants, and Bubba Gump stands out for all the wrong reasons. Overpriced seafood and aggressive merchandise sales dominate the experience, and countless reviews warn there’s better food just a short walk away. The Forrest Gump nostalgia is a clever hook, I’ll give them that, but nostalgia doesn’t improve frozen shrimp.
All spectacle and no substance best describe the central commercial hub in midtown Manhattan. Oversized billboards, overpriced chain restaurants, aggressive crowds, and enterprising street performers looking for tips make Times Square the ultimate tourist trap. Bubba Gump fits perfectly into that ecosystem. While the experience justifies the cost for many, some reviewers consistently mention higher prices and varying wait times.
3. DK Oyster – Mykonos, Greece
Few restaurants have drawn as many complaints as DK Oyster. Diners often report paying from €600 to over €2,300 for modest meals. Unclear per-kilo pricing and delayed price disclosure have made it a popular Mykonos spot to avoid. Those numbers aren’t typos. That’s the equivalent of a small vacation fund, spent on a seafood platter beside the Aegean.
This is what happens when a stunning location meets zero accountability. The beach setting sells itself, so the restaurant barely has to try. Despite improvements some tourist-trap restaurants make, the underlying business model often remains the same: capitalizing on tourists’ willingness to pay extra for convenience and the allure of a trendy or iconic location. DK Oyster is exactly that model, fully unfiltered.
4. Rainforest Cafe – Multiple Locations, USA
Rainforest Cafe entertains families with its campy, jungle-decorated interior, but the food rarely matches the show. The menu consists of overpriced, generic dishes with nothing to boast about regarding flavors. The nonstop sound effects and animatronic displays can easily create a very overwhelming and chaotic dining experience, and due to the large volume, service usually suffers, leaving diners to long waits.
Think of it like eating inside a Spirit Halloween store that serves chicken tenders. The spectacle is real, the food is forgettable. Early tourist trap restaurants were notorious for their inflated prices and subpar offerings, luring tourists in with flashy signage, gimmicky themes, or promises of local cuisine, only to deliver mediocre food and service. Rainforest Cafe wrote the playbook on exactly that.
5. Restaurants Near the Colosseum – Rome, Italy
Restaurants close to attractions like the Colosseum, Duomo di Firenze, or Piazza San Marco are often overpriced and serve mediocre food. Rome is a city where extraordinary pasta exists around nearly every corner, but step too close to a landmark and the quality evaporates almost instantly. One traveler in Rome reported being served a frozen supermarket spaghetti meal reheated in a microwave oven and being charged nearly €30 just for that one plate.
Eating at restaurants in Rome is relatively cheap if you go to where the locals eat, with a delicious two or three course dinner including wine available for around €20 to €25 per person. The contrast is staggering. One spot near Castel Sant’Angelo is infamous for inflated bills and hefty service charges, with visitors repeatedly calling out non-transparent pricing. The lesson? Walk two more blocks.
6. Nyhavn Canal Restaurants – Copenhagen, Denmark
When you go to Copenhagen, you may check out Nyhavn. It is a really great place to visit, and TripAdvisor has it rated highly. However, when something is really popular, everyone is going to go, meaning the place becomes overcrowded. The candy-colored buildings make for unforgettable photos, but the restaurants lining that iconic waterfront have taken full advantage of the foot traffic.
Here’s the thing: the food in Denmark can be genuinely world-class. Nyhavn is not where you’ll find it. As businesses target tourists who may be willing to pay premium prices, the cost of living in popular tourist areas can increase, a phenomenon often referred to as “tourist inflation.” Nyhavn’s dining scene is a textbook case of exactly that. Wander inland to find the real Copenhagen food culture.
7. Fisherman’s Wharf Restaurants – San Francisco, USA
Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco is one of the most “touristy” places in the city, and one website listed it as the biggest tourist trap in the entire world. Dramatic, sure, but there’s truth in it. The Wharf is crowded, people will be pushy, and when you explore the shops and restaurants, you will pay much more than an average meal.
San Francisco is home to some of the most exciting and innovative dining scenes on the entire West Coast. Fisherman’s Wharf is basically the opposite of all of that. Locals frequently call out any restaurant in the Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39 area as a tourist trap to avoid. The clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl is fun the first time, but it’s not worth twice the normal price every single visit.
8. Planet Hollywood – Las Vegas & Orlando, USA
Inside Planet Hollywood, Hollywood memorabilia and themed dining overshadow the menu. Gift shops push merchandise before and after meals, and food quality often disappoints. It feels less like a restaurant and more like a museum gift shop that also happens to serve burgers. The concept was cutting-edge in the 1990s. In 2026, it just feels tired.
Some establishments have made their reputations on allure alone, drawing crowds in with flashy branding, iconic dishes, and immersive themes that make the restaurant experience something more. Most of these rely more on reputation than consistently good food or an excellent dining experience. Planet Hollywood is the embodiment of that. What’s especially hard to stomach is when a dining experience is expensive, inauthentic, or boring all at once.
9. Katz’s Delicatessen – New York City, USA
I know, I know. Katz’s is an institution, a living piece of New York history, and yes, the scene from When Harry Met Sally was filmed there. It’s genuinely iconic. Katz’s Delicatessen has built a rich history yet is often more myth than reality. Long lines of tourists fill the space, making dining less of an authentic experience, and locals mostly avoid Katz’s for smaller, less popular restaurants that serve superior food without the mayhem.
That word “mayhem” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. The pastrami is good, no question. The question is whether it’s worth the hour-long queue and the premium ticket price. Famous places rarely deliver to expectation; they are usually crowded, the food hurried and usually prepped well ahead, and prices increase to take advantage of demand. Katz’s fits that pattern far more than most fans want to admit.
10. Restaurants Along Bourbon Street – New Orleans, USA
Bourbon Street hosts around 60-some-odd bars and restaurants, and to avoid overpriced drinks, expensive meals, and tacky gift shops, visitors should venture outside this 13-block stretch to discover the real New Orleans. The irony is that New Orleans has one of the richest, most distinctive food cultures of any city in the United States. You can find it easily, just not on Bourbon Street.
Real NOLA cuisine lives in neighborhood spots, family-run joints, and po’boy counters hidden a few blocks off the main drag. Among the many money mistakes that travelers make is choosing overpriced meals in touristy areas, thereby missing out on real local experiences. Bourbon Street is a prime example of that trade-off taken to its most extreme conclusion. The atmosphere is electric and undeniably fun, but your wallet will feel the burn the morning after.
11. Sirocco Sky Bar & Restaurant – Bangkok, Thailand
Steep minimum spends, a strict dress code, and relentless upselling have made Sirocco one of Bangkok’s costliest dining spots. Many say the view easily outshines the food, and its feature in The Hangover II continues to drive up the premiums. That last part is the key. A single Hollywood cameo has been inflating dinner bills for well over a decade now.
The rooftop view is genuinely spectacular, no argument there. Bangkok from above at night is something worth seeing. It’s hard to resist the convenience of proximity, especially when you’ve been walking around all day, but being close to major attractions usually comes with big crowds and high rents that hyperlocal spots wouldn’t be able to afford. Sirocco is precisely that kind of location premium dressed up as fine dining. Go for a drink, skip the dinner bill.
12. Restaurants Near Aguas Calientes – Machu Picchu, Peru
Machu Picchu requires advance permits and costs $50 to $70 for entrance, suffering from Disney-level crowds despite visitor caps. The town of Aguas Calientes exists almost solely to extract money from tourists with inflated hotel and restaurant prices. It’s almost poetically absurd: you travel to one of the most breathtaking ancient wonders on earth, and the surrounding town is essentially a very expensive vending machine.
The ruins remain spectacular, but you’ll share them with thousands of other people taking the same photos. The experience feels rushed and commercialized. The restaurants around Aguas Calientes understand this captive audience dynamic completely. According to the World Tourism Organization, tourists spend an average of roughly a quarter more at tourist-trap restaurants than at local eateries. In Aguas Calientes, with nowhere else to go, that premium only goes higher. Pack snacks. Seriously.
