myspicename t1_j1tdurj wrote on December 27, 2022 at 6:15 AM

Reply to comment by Mikemo05 in 10 South Korean tourists were stranded in a blizzard near Buffalo. Then they spent 2 nights in a stranger's home, cooking and watching football. by HalFWit

There are tons of buses that go to Niagara Falls for one day tours. And it's the same if traffic didn't exist maybe.

More importantly, Niagara Falls is a top 3 in the world sight for waterfalls. Noone's trying to visit Niagara Falls the city...

There aren't even ten real cities in the US worth visiting for an international tourist...

bdone2012 t1_j1uhhx6 wrote on December 27, 2022 at 2:22 PM

People do go chill in the Niagara falls city on the canadian side. There's pretty nice casinos and vineyards nearby. It doesn't have the wow factor of Vegas but it's better than Atlantic city for the most part.

That's a pretty rough day trip though. It's an 8.5 hour trip. I've taken plenty of overnight bus rides in my day, some more unpleasant than others but 17 hours on a bus in a day is pretty long unless it's a really nice bus. Unless you mean they sleep there for one day.

But I could also name over 10 cities to visit for foreign tourists that they'd find interesting though. Not saying Niagara is a bad choice, but for the cost of the bus they could probably get to new Orleans for example.

For cities: NYC, San Francisco, LA, Chicago, Portland, Nashville, Miami, New Orleans, Austin, Savanah, Charleston, Asheville, DC, Las Vegas, Boston, St Augustin, Tucson.

I'm even missing some places I haven't been such as Seattle. And if you add in Canadian cities you have Montreal which is very cool about 5 hours away. Toronto is cool and I imagine Vancouver is great but I haven't been. You can also get down to Mexico really cheap as well. For example flights to cancun are always surprisingly cheap in comparison to flights to Mexico city. From there you can hop onto a bus to Mérida which is a great city.

myspicename t1_j1uhzte wrote on December 27, 2022 at 2:26 PM

Yea, foreign tourists are going to get on a plane to St Augustin, Tuscon, and Asheville from NYC for a trip, rather than seeing one of the three biggest waterfalls in the world on a bus ride. It's a 7 hour bus ride that leaves from Midtown in the morning, does lunch at the border, a quick boat ride, a walk around, and then a bus ride back.

They're just gonna be like, "hey I'm doing a US trip to NYC and SF, let me just jam in a hop over to Montreal including border control and a quick pop over to Cancun (where flights for in demand times are 1200 dollars or more) and then a bus to Merida with two kids with a single entry visa. I'll also time a red-eye flight to New Orleans for super cheap, because my once in a lifetime trip to NYC is PERFECTLY timed to check out a cheap flight to NOLA, and I'm sure there won't be any flight delays for my connecting flight back to Korea that would be at my cost if I missed it."

Mostly they just do NYC with day trips to Niagara Falls and DC, and then SF with a day trip to Napa maybe, or LA to SF seeing Big Sur. MAYBE they do Chicago, but really unlikely, and if they have kids maybe Disney. Nobody is going to second tier cities or tiny college towns like Portland, Nashville, Memphis, Asheville unless they have friends there or they are like huge Elvis or Dollywood type fans.

People are FAR more likely to do nature trips as well then some small city...Niagra Falls, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite. It's like you only travel to cities and stay in hostels and aren't seeing what people actually do.