- Wherever you go for your next vacation, avoid these places.
“If you build it, they will come,” says the common expression. That’s simply not true.
Creating a popular tourist attraction is shockingly difficult. Build it in the wrong place, at the wrong time, or do your math poorly, and all you’ll ever have is a giant money sink and a lot of people making fun of you.
Here are eight (and one more) of the most poorly planned and disappointing tourist traps ever built.
1. Mona Lisa Room (Louvre)
Before any art aficionados get upset, let me be clear: I’m not calling Mona Lisa a disappointment. It’s a marvelous work of art. Going to see it, however, is often a miserable experience.
The Louvre attracts huge crowds, bigger than the museum was ever designed for. Lines to see the legendary painting are so long that you may be queuing for three hours. You can’t even go see other works because you’ll lose your place in line.
Once you finally reach Mona Lisa, you’ll have exactly 30 seconds to gawk at it through armored glass from a safe distance of several feet until you’re shooed away to make room for the next person. Add to that the fact that the painting is quite small in real life, and the experience has left many art fans with a sour taste.
2. South China Mall
In 2005, the South China Mall opened its doors. At the time, it was the world’s largest shopping mall by both floor area and retail space. As such, it was expected to be a huge tourist draw.
Ten years later, 99% of its stores stood vacant. Those stores that weren’t empty were mostly occupied by Western fast food chains. It turned out that the location of the mall was so out of the way that nobody really wanted to travel there just to shop.
Since then, the mall’s fortunes have somewhat turned around, thanks to the addition of an outdoor amusement park and a rebrand targeting more middle-class customers. Still, South China Mall is far from the tourist draw it was envisioned to be.
3. Galactic Starcruiser
After Disney bought the rights to Star Wars in 2012, the company had a bright idea. They’d construct a theme hotel that would simulate the experience of being on a luxury space cruiser in the Star Wars universe. It would have futuristic bars, actors in alien suits, everything!
So they built it and called it the Galactic Starcruiser. The hotel opened in 2022 – and it closed in 2023.
The space hotel, with all its actors and attractions, was so expensive to maintain that a two-night stay cost more than $1,000. There also honestly wasn’t that much to do, and no visitor ever had a reason to come back.
The Galactic Starcruiser was such a spectacular failure that I’ve written an entire article about it. Go read it here.
4. Plymouth Rock
Plymouth Rock marks the place where the Mayflower landed, bringing the Pilgrims into America. Although it has immense symbolic significance to our country’s history, there’s very little point in going to see the Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
First of all, it doesn’t mark the spot where the Pilgrims landed. The rock has been moved several times over the centuries, and it’s not at its original location.
Additionally, according to state park rangers at the site, it’s questionable if the rock that’s there is even the real Plymouth Rock. It’s a shame, too, that such a notable landmark has been so mistreated.
5. Marble Arch Mound
The Marble Arch Mound was opened to the public in July 2021 in London. It was supposed to be a breath of fresh air in the city recovering from the COVID pandemic. This 82-foot-high mound, covered in lush vegetation, was supposed to award visitors with scenic views over the city.
It didn’t. The mound was so pathetically low that you couldn’t see squat for the surrounding skyscrapers. And all that “lush vegetation” turned out to be a thin coating of scraggly grass and a few trees that looked like they were begging to be put out of their misery.
To top it all off, you had to pay about $10 to be able to climb the miserable thing. Even after the entrance fee was scrapped, nobody cared about the mound. They tore it down a year later, making it an $8 million waste of money.
6. Ozark Medieval Fortress
In the mid-1990s, French property developer Michel Guyot started renovating a medieval castle in France, allowing the public to follow its authentic construction methods. It was a cool idea and fairly popular, so Guyot decided to repeat the project.
In Arkansas.
The Ozark Medieval Fortress’ construction began in 2009. The following year, visitors could come watch the work’s progress. In 2012, the castle was put on an indefinite hiatus.
It turns out that not many people wanted to travel to middle-of-nowhere Arkansas to see a castle that wasn’t even finished. The lack of visitors meant a lack of income, and the fortress project is now all but abandoned.
7. Shania Twain Center
Dollywood in Tennessee is a popular attraction celebrating the life and achievements of country star Dolly Parton. Well, surely people would also want to come visit a site dedicated to Shania Twain, the world’s best-selling female country artist and one of the best-selling musicians of all time.
No, they didn’t. The Shania Twain Center opened in Twain’s hometown of Timmins, Ontario, in 2001. By 2013, it closed its doors and was demolished the following year.
The problem was that when Twain sang about coming from a remote country town, she meant it. Timmins is so out of the way of… Anything, really, so the center only ever brought in a fifth of the projected 50,000 annual visitors.
8. World Islands
You may have heard of the World Islands. It’s an artificial archipelago outside of Dubai, UAE, shaped like the world map. It’s also a massive failure of a project.
The islands were supposed to attract rich and famous buyers, who in turn would attract tourists to see them and the unique structure. The construction of the islands started in 2008.
You know what else started in 2008? The 2008 financial crisis, or the Great Recession.
Very few of the islands have been sold and none of them has livable housing. What’s worse, the construction isn’t finished, so the archipelago really doesn’t look like the world map.
Oh, and the islands are sinking.
Honorable Mention: Ryugyong Hotel
It’s a bit questionable whether the Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea’s capital of Pyongyang counts as a tourist attraction. Sure, it was originally planned to have a luxury hotel, but there’s the slight issue of North Korea being almost impossible to visit.
Additionally, the giant pyramid-shaped tower isn’t finished, and it probably never will be. Work started in 1987, came to a halt in 1992 when the Soviet Union collapsed, and has barely continued since.
The outside of the hotel is more or less complete-looking by now. But according to all reports, it’s a hollow shell, with the interior being utterly unfinished.
But hey, they added an LED display on the side to display propaganda in 2018! At least the never-ever hotel has some use.