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10 Over-Hyped Beaches (And Our Alternatives)
Marisa Milanese September 18, 2006
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Waikiki Beach on Oahu features cool breezes, gentle waves and a picture-perfect view of the Diamond Head crater. It also draws an average of 5,000 visitors a day. That works out to roughly 24 square feet of sand per person—more or less the size of a double bed. The beach is rapidly becoming Oahu's own Coney Island.
Every year, travel magazines and websites (including this one) itemize the world's best beaches. Sadly, these lists tend to kill with their kindness. According to Walter McLeod, president of the Clean Beaches Council, when a beach makes a list, "here come the people, here comes the traffic, here comes everything that you were going to the beach to avoid."
Granted, even without the glossies, beaches are mammoth draws. The Clean Beaches Council claims that 180 million Americans make more than two billion trips to the beach a year. According to the National Resources Defense Council, ocean-related tourism and recreation contributes a whopping $29 billion to the U.S. economy every year.
See our slideshow of over-hyped beaches.
According to Scott D. Berman, a principal in the hospitality and leisure consulting group of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, for many people going to the beach has evolved from a winter lark to a full-time job. "June through August are some of the highest-occupancy months for hotels in beach settings," he says. "Twenty years ago, that would have been unheard of."
The Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba, for example, welcomes year-round crowds to its undeniably pretty beaches. But vacationers at Palm Beach—the island's most popular—may feel like they're squatting on a sandy traffic island (jet skis in the water, high-rise hotels on shore). Then there's Grand Cayman Island's Seven Mile Beach, which is incredibly over-hyped—and just five and a half miles long.
To compile our list, we took a hard look at beaches that, while perfectly beatiful places during low season, probably get more attention than they're worth. We considered physical attributes: dimensions, sand quality, vistas. We tallied daily crowd counts (for example, will the beach be visited by the passengers of several gargantuan cruise ships throughout the day?). We evaluated buzz kills of all kinds (noisy motor boats, tacky souvenir stands, pushy hawkers). In short, we asked whether the beaches often rated the best are really worth their salt. Herein, a list of some that may be suffering from overhype.
See our slideshow of over-hyped beaches.
Observatory Hotel
Originally from New Zealand, Chief Concierge Michael Anderson has lived in Sydney for the past 18 years.
BEST RESTAURANT
Tetsuya's.
BEST GIFT FOR A SPOUSE
Australia's famed pink diamonds.
BEST GOLF COURSE
My personal favorite is The New South Wales Golf Club, a traditional coastal links course located at Little Bay in the suburb of La Perouse.
BEST DAY TRIP
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