Do native English speakers use the word "touristic"?

Solution 1:

As a Dutchman, I have noticed the discrepancy between the English word and most Continental words. I believe the problem lies in the fact that we have a single all-round, neutral adjective on the Continent—at least your closest neighbours do: Holland, Belgium, France—, while you must make do with tourist or touristy.

Een toeristische attractie (Du.) — a tourist attraction.

This sounds perfectly fine in Dutch; in English the noun tourist, while acceptable, is forced to do the work.

Een toeristische route (Du.) — a tourist route? a touristy route?

Perhaps you will disagree, but neither English word sounds nearly as appropriate as the Dutch adjective; tourist route, arguably the better of the pair, somehow has a hint of modern marketese, while Dutch toeristische route is more neutral.

Moreover, Dutch and French are less ready to use nouns as adjectives, which makes using tourist even less attractive for us than it is for the English. For that reason, we crave a neutral word referring to sight-seeing but not evoking the image of concrete tourists. It is very hard to pin-point the difference in connotation.

Solution 2:

In British English the two words are not equivalent. Touristic means "of or relating to tourism" and is a neutral word without connotation, while touristy is usually used in a pejorative sense.

touristy; relating to, appealing to, or visited by tourists (often used to suggest tawdriness or lack of authenticity)

Possibly non-native speakers think they should use the adjective touristic while native speakers prefer to form compound nouns from tourist, for example a tourist map or a tourist route.

In other Germanic languages compound nouns are formed without spaces so I concur it's quite likely that they feel that an adjective should be used instead although in fact the more natural way is to use a noun.

Sometimes the adjective touristic is preferred (or unavoidable). For example:

... a revival intended to enhance the touristic potential of the city of Saint Louis

We are all used to the exploitation of art by tourism, but touristic exploitation of the miseries of war and the destruction of art is a grotesque perversion which brings us up short.

Solution 3:

Do native English Speakers use "touristic"? I found this little discourse, which might help:

Person 1: my experience this term is used mostly by non-native speakers of English. I didn't even think it was really a word. I've never heard europeans use the word which in my experience is common: touristy. I looked at some dictionaries and found that some have an entry for touristy but not touristic. Some also note that touristy generally has negative connotations. All worth looking into

Person 2:In response to this: I am a native English speaker from Europe. I was born in England and I have also lived in Scotland, Northern Ireland and The Republic of Ireland.It is interesting for me because I have had the opposite reflex when I came across the word "touristy". I thought that "touristy" was a made up word. When I hear the word "touristic" I think of the positive aspects of the described destination i.e. Worth visiting by tourists. Whereas when something is described to me as being touristy I think of too many tourists spoiling that place. I am interested to hear comments from others

Person 3:As an American, I initial reaction was that touristic was made up and rare, while the very common touristy was slang or non-standard. A quick google search indicates the opposite, however. And m-w.com and dictionary.com have entries for both.

As can be seen, it seems that the native speakers don't use it, and somehow, the Europeans and non-native speakers use it.

The cause of this could be the fact that Europeans, whose first language isn't English, will learn a word that exists, but isn't really popular among native speakers. This word, could apply specifically to a certain European concept or issue, and perhaps that's why it becomes popular in Europe. That's a conjecture of my own.

Solution 4:

A search in Amazon will yield about 206 results of books that have in its title the word "touristic" vs. ZERO for "touristy".

If you use NGram and compare "touristic" with "tourist", "tourism" and "touring" you'll find that the word is used but not as much compared to the latter three:

However, if you compare it with "touristically" and even the French "touristique", you'll find out that it occurs more frequently than the latter two:

What's curious is that even EL&U flags "touristically" as a misspelling!

And to get back to your question regarding "touristic" vs. "touristy", here's the Ngram:

You might be on to something here - it seems that "touristy" is getting more popular than "touristic" through the years.

Solution 5:

Rather than "touristic", which to a native english speaker just sounds wrong, even if it isn't, wouldn't "touristed" do just as well? It sounds better to me, and I think it means the same thing.

Interestingly, "touristic" always reminds me of Dutch backpackers. They love that word.