Travelers don’t care about traditional tourist attractions such as the Eiffel Tower anymore, right?
Wrong! While “experience” is a hot buzzword in the in-destination industry, partly fueled by platforms such as Airbnb Experiences, where travelers can partake in authentic activities such as cooking classes, learning traditional crafts and more, research shows that travelers across demographics—including those notoriously fickle millennials—are still flocking to (and reviewing) classic tourism attractions.
To learn whether attractions are still up to snuff, Arival partnered with travel analytics company Travel Appeal to analyze reviews of tours, activities, and attractions from four major websites for Paris, France between 2017 and 2019. We found that the number of reviews for just three top Paris tourist attractions—the Eiffel Tower, Louvre, and Notre Dame—vastly outnumbered the number of reviews for 3,800 tours, activities, and experiences over the same time period. These findings suggest that while experiences are important, most travelers still want to visit iconic attractions while vacationing.
Click through the slideshow below to see our research details:
