KUALA LUMPUR – The Penang Hill was recently ranked ninth in American daily USA Today’s world’s biggest tourist trap list, earning it the distinction of being the only Asian attraction in the top 10.
Penang Hill is also ranked 14th and 64th in the ‘most overrated’ and ‘most overpriced’ attractions list, respectively.
Other attractions in Asia that made the top 50 are Indonesia’s Tegalalang rice terrace in Bali (12), Japan’s Tsukiji fish market (34), Hong Kong’s Peak Tram (39), Thailand’s Wat Rong Khun (41), and Jigokudani snow monkey park (49) in Nagano, Japan.
USA Today conducted its list by analysing 23.2 million Google reviews of the top 500 tourist attractions in the world, as of July this year. The list consists of 65 countries from six continents.
“For each attraction, we asked a simple question: How frequently do the reviews mention the terms ‘tourist trap’, ‘overrated’, or ‘expensive’?”
Subsequently, the news outlet compared each attraction with one another by measuring the frequency of each term, then dividing it by the total number of reviews the attraction received.
The daily said only English reviews were included in its analysis, and keywords were also used in several generally positive reviews, but were not frequent enough to be statistically significant. – September 26, 2023