Edinburgh's Royal Mile named the UK's biggest tourist trap while famous The Witchery restaurant makes top 10

Two famous landmarks in Scotland’s capital city fare badly based on TripAdvisor reviews

The UK’s biggest tourist traps have been named – and one of Edinburgh’s most famous streets has grabbed the unwanted top spot.

Holiday rental company Casago scoured through thousands of TripAdvisor reviews to discover how many times visitors referred to places or attractions as "tourist traps". They then compiled a list of the world's biggest tourist traps, including the top 10 in Britain.

Unfortunately for Auld Reekie, the historic Royal Mile, which contained 502 mentions of the phrase ‘tourist trap’, took the number one spot.

The UK’s biggest tourist traps have been named – and one of Edinburgh’s most famous streets has grabbed the unwanted top spot.

In second place was the London Eye, with 334 mentions of it being a ‘tourist trap’, while Covent Garden was in third place, with 156 mentions.

This was followed by Cornwall's Land's End landmark (140), York's Shambles (120), The Needles in Totland (97), Stonehenge (96), The Cavern Club in Liverpool (96), The Witchery by The Castle in Edinburgh (95) and in tenth position Sally Lunn's Historic Eating House and Museum in Bath.

Casago's report found the number one tourist trap in the world was Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, which had a total of 1,049 mentions of the attraction being a tourist trap.

In second spot was Barcelona's bustling boulevard Las Ramblas (793 mentions), with the Temple Bar in Dublin taking third place globally.

“We searched for the phrase ‘tourist trap’ on TripAdvisor (with no location filter applied) to find the global attractions with the most mentions of ‘tourist trap’ in accompanying reviews,” said a spokesperson for Casago.

“We then searched for the biggest tourist traps in each country and US state by customising the location settings and carrying out the same search, ranking the attractions by the number of ‘tourist trap’ mentions.”