In the glossy brochure or on the photoshopped blog, the destination is a dream. You and your loved one will be lying alone on a fabulous beach, gazing out over an emerald sea while the occasional sailboat glides silently by. In reality, it's so crowded you can barely fit a towel between the other tourists, the water is murky and the ball-throwing kids are shouting so loudly you can't even hear what you're thinking. Do you recognise it?
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ShareDo the images speak the truth?
I'm writing this post because I saw this photo report on the Travel Expectations Vs Reality on Bored Panda. So very accurate! It's great to dream away with the help of (zoomed and photoshopped) travel photos, but if they don't match reality ... won't you be disappointed when you travel to one of the places?
Spontaneously it feels like you want an honest picture of a destination ... but at the same time you want to dream away to perfect sunsets. Or what do you say?
How to avoid disappointment?
Whether we like it or not, we will continue to be inundated with photos from destinations where the weather is perfect, where there are no other tourists in the picture, and where the colours may be... little stronger than they are in reality. So maybe we have to learn to deal with that. How do you do that? Here are some suggestions:
- If possible, choose the low season and avoid visiting attractions on public holidays.
- Buy skip the line tickets in advance for popular attractions.
- Ignore the most famous destinations and find your own beach that no one has written about!
- Take the opportunity to visit interesting museums when it rains.
- Have realistic expectations
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znogge says:
It is really very rare that the pictures match the reality! In Mallorca it was packed, but in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates it was better. Having to pack a sunbed at 7 in the morning to get a seat is the worst thing I know! It was most free when I visited the daughter who worked in Kalamate / Messini, Wonderful beaches and beyond the ravages of tourism ... Skip the line we now choose even if it costs a penny but who wants to queue for several hours when time is limited?
Have a nice weekend 😀.
18 March 2016 - 9:13
znogge says:
Kalamata it is!
18 March 2016 - 9:13
Katarina says:
I'm quite resilient so I don't have unrealistic expectations really but am prepared, for example here in Stockholm, for a lot of tourists everywhere. But a tip can be low season as you write. Beaches are still most beautiful off season, during the season it is far too hot and sunny.
18 March 2016 - 9:13
Åsa says:
Then you have to remember that you can't travel away from yourself. You have both your body and your mind to drag along!
18 March 2016 - 9:56
Geddfish says:
You can be fooled by beautiful photoshopped images! Thank you for your tips. Nowadays I also check Trip Advisor's reviews, I'm a writer there myself.
An organised bus trip can be good with their excursions including sightseeing tickets. You get to be about you and around you.
Have a nice weekend! 😀
18 March 2016 - 9:58
Ama de casa says:
Haha! Really liked the flipable pictures 😀.
Travelling in the low season is really a good thing if you have the opportunity. Fewer people and cheaper overall.
18 March 2016 - 10:35
Lennart says:
Reduce the risk of disappointment - Go camping!
18 March 2016 - 11:02
Steve says:
I was really disappointed on a trip to Cyprus in the early 80s when my parents came along; their first ever trip abroad. The super nice apartment hotel I booked in the pictures turned out to be not even finished when we arrived. An anticlimax!
I managed to negotiate an acceptable alternative; 2 two-bedroom apartments next to each other in another nice resort. The holiday was then fantastic, partly thanks to a taxi driver whose family, parents and relatives we were invited to on three occasions for fantastic meals. The taxi driver's name was Charalambos but was called Champis.
The great disappointment turned into joy, my parents were ecstatic after that trip and we often talked about Champis when we met.
Cyprus as a holiday destination met all expectations. What was shown in the brochures was a bluff, but what was not shown was the benefit of the trip. So it can also go.
18 March 2016 - 10:19
Renates Reiser says:
I have experienced several times being a bit shocked by how different the reality actually is compared to most of the pictures you see of various destinations. I was lucky along the Great Wall of China, as I chose to walk a part of the wall where there were usually few tourists, and walked most of the distance alone. At the Taj Mahal, however, I was travelling in a group and didn't have much choice, so we went there a while before sunset and it felt like there were a thousand billion people there with us. The same thing happened in Kyoto last autumn, when I went during the period when apparently most tourists come there to see the autumn colours. It was almost impossible to move in the thick tourist flow... :p Planning is therefore essential if you want to avoid this! But on the other hand, more and more people are travelling, and there will hardly be less crowding at tourist destinations in the future...
18 March 2016 - 11:24
4000mil says:
I find that if you do some research in travel forums, blogs, Lonely Planet, etc., you can usually predict the direction of the journey beforehand and prepare yourself mentally.
Some sights can be worth it even if there are a lot of people. Personally, I have a hard time with historical sights that are crowded with people, I need some space and peace and quiet to enjoy them. (Such as Angkor Wat, the Great Wall of China, the Colloseum etc.)
18 March 2016 - 11:50
Solan says:
Yes, but it's a bit of fun too. Nowadays you can check everything in advance, almost know what the hotel room looks like....mja no surprises. Lasse met a couple from Luleå yesterday, they are travelling in a motorhome for a year. The couple had received good tips from you, think they have a blog, motorhome something. They were going to hike in the Pyrenees today...we are not 🙂
18 March 2016 - 12:11
admin says:
Znogge, that thing about picking a deckchair is not so fun... I used to like skip the line tickets, but time is precious when you're on holiday so now I can really see the point!
Katarina, I have understood that you like beaches better in the low season! 😉 We enjoyed the beaches in Croatia very much in October and November, and then it was quiet and nice 🙂.
Åsa, you have a point there 😉.
Geddfish, Tripadvisor is a great tip! I also check there sometimes. Even the part about booking a tour before things are included can be smart!
Steve, oh what an interesting and nice story about your Cyprus trip. Extra sad to be disappointed when you take someone with you like that. But nice that it ended so well! 🙂
Ama de casa, aren't the pictures fun? We also like low season, will probably never again go to southern Europe during August 😉.
Lennart, you can be disappointed by destinations even with a motorhome? But the advantage is of course that you can roll on! 🙂
Renate, interesting to hear your experiences! Yes, there are more and more tourists all the time so you wonder where it will go?
4000 miles, yes, it helps if you read up and prepare! I hate when it's really crowded, but some places you want to see when you're there ... but of course you have to ask yourself at what price 😉.
Solan, oh but what fun! I know who they are! I follow them on FB, but think they write more there than on the blog!?
Alexandra, yes, of course it was fun pictures? Yes, I also think you have to learn to live with it. But I will avoid the high season as much as possible! 😉
18 March 2016 - 13:15
Lanclin says:
I feel a little guilty about some of the empty pictures in cyberspace of places where there are usually people. The tactic is to wait for the second when only a few tourists appear in the picture, ha ha! The thing (for me) is probably not to engage in false marketing but I simply want to get the subject without unknown people in the photo.
However, sometimes it is impossible and the price is probably taken by tourist groups where everyone loves their selfie sticks. Sometimes you have to cruise through a selfie stick forest and can forget the nice pictures you planned for 🙂 .
18 March 2016 - 13:15
Alexandra says:
Haha the pictures were entertaining anyway. The best thing is, as many have already mentioned, to read reviews on Tripadvisor and the like. But just that in pictures it is always empty of people and in reality it is rarely so you have to learn to live with ?
18 March 2016 - 12:40
Steel city anna says:
I who like to take photos avoid both sights and people 🙂 walking around here in Robin Hood forests and on the moors and talking to the sheep, suits me very well. Have twice failed to go into the castle in Edinburgh because people annoyed me so much. I often go to Chatsworth Castle in Derbyshire, but have a very good idea when others don't!
Sometimes you have to make sacrifices if you really, really want to see something. The Christmas market in Prague was one such thing, the Beatles museum in Liverpool and the Colosseum in Rome. It's important to think carefully about what you want and what is worth the hassle instead of just pushing on with things you 'should' see.
18 March 2016 - 15:12
Ditte says:
I now prefer to avoid the most touristy places where you have to crowd to get a seat. And I'm free all the time so I don't go when it's a school holiday and everyone else is going and it's too hot and sunny in my opinion.
Crowding on a beach is not my thing. But luckily there are a few places left where there hasn't been an invasion yet. We are currently on one of them. But everyone wants the most perfect place, so it gets crowded after a while.
When it comes to big cities and attractions, it's better to pay so you don't have to queue and wait for the attractions. But preferably in the low season.
New destinations are emerging all the time and many people may choose to visit them.
In some tourist locations in Asia and Europe, we have found that for each room in a hotel there were chairs on the beach belonging to that room. I like that. But it has been smaller "boutique hotels", but the idea is good. At other hotels, we have experienced that you are not allowed to book sun loungers and if you are away for more than 20 minutes, the reservation is cancelled. Quite ok in my opinion.
18 March 2016 - 18:27
Dryden - Traveler's Edition says:
Just like 4000mil, I get croup when there are too many people in too small an area. Usually I have been spared, but a couple of times I have been really disappointed. The latest is Prague last autumn. Don't get me wrong, I really think it was a nice city and the weekend was a blast, but I never expected such a hysterical amount of people. And then it was still at the end of September.
18 March 2016 - 21:19
admin says:
Lanclin, I often do the same as you sometimes, except maybe in cities and on beaches where you want to get a picture of the crowd. I don't try to avoid unknown people completely, but I usually try to avoid close ups of people I don't know. I also don't mean that it would be wrong to look for empty views if it makes a nice picture, of course you are always looking for the best subject!
Steel City Anna, you are right that you have to think about whether it is "worth" it. Sometimes it can be, sometimes not. I think it's probably hardest if there are insanely many people and queues, when I haven't really been prepared for it ...
Ditte, the advantage of not travelling with school age children (or having special holiday times to fit in a job) is that you can always choose the low season! Paying for skip-the-line tickets can be worthwhile! Paying for sunbeds we are a little too stingy for, haha, except in Albania (but there it was not about many kroner) 😉
Dryden, we had the same feeling as you when we arrived in Dubrovnik. It was at the end of September if I remember correctly so we thought it would have calmed down a bit, but it was really hysterically crowded. A fantastic city really, but I still did not really get the feeling that I had thought ...
18 March 2016 - 21:45
BP says:
Personally, I/we actually check various forums/Tripadvisor/blogs to get a relatively honest picture of a destination. For me, brochures somehow belong to charter trips, which we have not done for many years. Of course you can check the usual travel agency sites and find a gem, but then I think you should "double check" with different travel forums to get the "right" picture.
Plus, you can just follow travel blogs - like yours, for example - to get info.
18 March 2016 - 23:08
Maria says:
I can't actually remember a specific situation when I felt cheated by pictures, but I'm sure there have been times when things have looked nicer in pictures than in reality. Not least pictures of hotel rooms. I myself do not think that I exaggerate reality in my blog and I do not photoshop my pictures all the more, other than that I e.g. increase a little on colour strength because I think that the pictures are almost never as colourful as I experienced it through my eyes 🙂 Interesting post!
20 March 2016 - 10:58
admin says:
BP, agree that it is good to check Tripadvisor, forums, blogs etc. Even blogs can probably have retouched pictures sometimes, but even so, you can probably be sure that blogs are much more honest than a travel agent 😉.
Maria, we do about the same retouching as you. My camera is a little bad at capturing light, so I often find that it is duller/brighter than in reality. Then I usually pull up the colour strength or contrast a little, but otherwise we don't change anything in the pictures.
21 March 2016 - 8:51
Fantasiresor says:
Yes, those hotel photos can really be deceiving! Sometimes I think it's the other way round too: that they show echoing empty rooms that look ghostly, instead of life and people. I'd rather see the feeling than the exact reality. Reality feels a bit boring, doesn't it?
21 March 2016 - 21:25
admin says:
Fantasy travel, I know what you mean! When you see a picture of a cold hotel room, it's pretty hard to imagine whether you'll like it or not... 😉.
22 March 2016 - 23:01