KillarneyToday.com Exclusive
ONE of the top travel writers in the world has infuriated Killarney’s business community after he branded the town one of Europe’s top ten tourist traps.
Guidebook author and travel TV host Rick Steves – considered America’s most respected authority on European travel – slated Killarney in a feature published in the big-selling USA Today newspaper.
In a scathing review, which has left businesses in the town reeling, Steves wrote: “This is a place where most tourists wear nametags – a traffic jam of tour buses. If you have the misfortune to spend the night in Killarney, you’ll understand what I mean.”
He added: “The town is a sprawling line of green Holiday Inns and outlet malls littered with pushy shoppers looking for plastic shamrocks.”
Attempting to justify his remarks, Steves said he has a responsibility as a travel writer not to rave about everything but to help travellers to “sort through the superlatives and smartly allocate their limited vacation time.”
His comments have sparked an angry backlash in Killarney which prides itself on its hard-earned reputation as one of the premier and best quality holiday destinations in Europe.
Irish Hotels Federation Kerry branch spokesman, Michael Rosney, blasted: “What Rick Steves truly knows about Killarney, he could write on the back of a postage stamp, with a paint brush, in block capitals.”
59-year-old Steves, whose travel company in Washington now employs 80 full-time staff, has produced more than 50 guidebooks on European travel and he hosts America’s most popular travel series on public television.
In addition to Killarney, his top ten European tourist traps also features the Blarney Stone about which he is equally scathing.
Steves, who has over 45,000 followers on Twitter, writes: “The best thing about this lame sight is watching a cranky man lower lemming-like tourists over the edge, belly up and head back, to kiss the stone while an automated camera snaps a photo – which will be available for purchase back at the parking lot. After a day of tour groups mindlessly climbing up here to perform this ritual, the stone is slathered with spit and lipstick.”
