Damn Tourists
These North Texans hate tourists more than New Yorkers do
We Texans pride ourselves on friendliness, but a few of our brethren are making the whole state look bad. A new survey has revealed how cities feel about tourists, and Arlington is the biggest hater of them all.
Stratos Jet Charters Inc. turned to Twitter to figure out the cities that were least and most friendly to tourists. For its findings, it gathered 37,171 geotagged tweets, dated from June 1, 2014, to July 20, 2015, that contained the terms “tourist” and “tourists.” Those tweets were rated as positive or negative using the sentiment analysis feature of the AlchemyAPI.
True, it’s not a foolproof way to determine a city’s overall friendliness, but it does shed some light on Twitter users.
Arlington, home of the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium and the Texas Rangers’ Globe Life Park, was the No. 1 tourist-hating city on the list. New York took the No. 2 spot, followed by Las Vegas; Boston; New Orleans; Orlando; Greensboro, North Carolina; Phoenix; Los Angeles; and San Francisco.
Regionally, the South and Northeast shared similar disdain, while the West remained relatively neutral and the Midwest was downright positive toward tourists.
There is some good news in all of this: Houston represents the Lone Star State as well, as the No. 8 most tourist-loving city. Thanks, H-Town! And Texas did not make an appearance among the 10 states that are least welcoming to tourists.
On the nice list with Houston are Chicago; Atlanta; Philadelphia; Miami; Portland, Oregon; Seattle; Washington, D.C.; Paradise, Nevada; and Nashville.
