tourist trap

plural tourist traps · alternative tourist-trap

1. derogatoryAn establishment, such as a shop or display, where tourists are encouraged to spend money on goods or services not necessarily of good value.

   For fifteen minutes they walked morosely and in silence through the steep streets where the shops are tourist-traps, alluringly baited with corals and trinkets.

   1911, Charles Neville Buck, chapter XX, in The Lighted Match

   1 more example

   As for Will Deverill, less critical of Nature’s handicraft, he found the inns over-civilised; the Post and the Bräu were too fine for his taste: they had come thus far in search of solitude and Alpine wilds, and they lighted instead on a sort of miniature Grindelwald, with half-a-dozen inns, a respectable café, experienced (or in other words extortionate) guides, and a regular tourist-trap for the sale of chamois-horns and carved models of châlets.

   1900, Grant Allen, chapter 1, in Linnet