Oldest Downtown Tourist Attraction: The Alamo 300 Alamo Plaza San Antonio has no shortage of downtown attractions that lure tourists, but the Alamo’s 1718 vintage makes it the oldest. A small band of Texian soldiers held out in the mission before they were wiped out by the Mexican army in one of the defining fights in Texas’ struggle for independence. Credit: Shutterstock / EndeavorMoorePhotography
The Alamo and the iconic San Antonio River Walk earned the dubious honor of being among the most overrated tourist traps in the world, according to a USA TODAY report published last week.

According to USA TODAY’s  report, the San Antonio River Walk is the biggest tourist trap in Texas and the No. 46 top tourist trap in the world. The Alamo wasn’t very far behind, coming in as the No. 48 biggest tourist trap on the planet.

NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston was the only other Texas landmark to make USA TODAY’s list, coming in at No. 88.

USA TODAY analyzed 23.2 million Google reviews of the world’s 500 most popular tourist attractions, spanning 65 countries across six continents in July 2023. To compile its rankings, the daily analyzed how often those reviews mentioned the terms “tourist trap,” “overrated” or “expensive.”

According to the data, 0.16% of all Google reviews of the River Walk mentioned the term “tourist trap” last month, while 0.15% of reviews of The Alamo included that phrase.

The Alamo and San Antonio River Walk also landed on USA Today’s top 100 “Most Overrated Attractions Worldwide,” a category also included in last week’s report, coming in at No. 81 and No. 98, respectively.

USA TODAY — the same paper that compiled this report — named the Alamo the best free attraction in the US in a separate report published in May.

According to the report, the Four Corners Monument in Arizona is the globe’s biggest tourist trap, while the original Voodoo Doughnut in Portland, Oregon, was ranked as the world’s most overrated attraction.

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This article appears in Aug 23 – Sep 5, 2023.

Michael Karlis is a Staff Writer at the San Antonio Current. He is a graduate of American University in Washington, D.C., whose work has been featured in Salon, Alternet, Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, Orlando...