These Popular Tourist Cities Shock Visitors With Unexpected Hostility—Find Out Which Made the List!
One traveler said they and their partner attended a local concert, befriended a family, and were invited to dinner.
Another person visiting Kyoto at the time said locals were “kind and welcoming at best and indifferent at worst.”
The contrast is particularly striking because Kyoto continues to receive glowing reviews from travelers.
In Travel + Leisure’s 2026 World’s Best Awards, the Japanese city was named No. 1 in Asia and No. 2 in the world, suggesting that the online complaints represent individual experiences rather than a universal verdict on the destination.
Paris was another frequent answer, with some visitors describing encounters with locals as cold, arrogant, or dismissive even when they tried to make an effort with the language.
“Paris, horrible rude people – they’re very arrogant. I tried to make an effort to speak French and be polite but still treated rudely,” one traveler claimed.
Another simply said Paris had “made me feel unwelcome” despite having traveled extensively.
Interestingly, Paris also appears in more positive hospitality measures.
A 2026 Travel + Leisure report based on more than 100,000 customer reviews across 107 cities found that Paris ranked fourth globally for customer service, with 55.7% of analyzed reviews mentioning friendly staff and service.
The numbers show that “unfriendly” can mean something very different depending on how you measure it
Preply’s 2023 Community Spirit Index meanwhile examined 53 cities using six measures, including visitor return rates, accommodation reviews mentioning friendly staff, safety, LGBTQ+ equality, happiness, and English proficiency.
Accra reportedly scored 3.12 out of 10, followed by Marrakech at 3.69, and Mumbai at 3.91.
But even those rankings measure something different from asking whether a tourist personally felt unwelcome.
A city can score well overall while still producing frustrating experiences for individual visitors, particularly in overcrowded tourist areas.
More recent research paints an even more complicated picture.
Travel + Leisure’s 2026 ranking of the world’s friendliest cities placed Edinburgh first, followed by Hanoi and Liverpool.
Paris came in fourth, despite its long-running reputation among some travelers for being unfriendly.
So while some travelers may leave a destination convinced that the locals could not wait to see them disappear, another visitor may come away with an entirely different story.
“On my fourth trip to Barcelona four years ago, the taxi driver threw our baggage on the ground. I was shocked,” one traveler recalled
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