Nearly five million visitors traveled to Colombia in 2025. That's a number that tourism boards celebrate, airline planners note, and hostel developers fund. It is also, according to a growing chorus of experienced travelers, a number that tells you more about effective destination marketing than about the country's actual offering relative to its price point.
A post shared on r/travel this week by a traveler who has visited more than 60 countries ignited one of the most substantive debates about Colombia seen on the platform in recent months — 122 comments, mostly from experienced Latin America travelers, and a thread that resists easy summary because the disagreements are genuine.
The Contrarian Case
The traveler's assessment was blunt: Colombia "does nothing particularly well." Having visited Bogotá, Medellín, Cartagena, Santa Marta, Minca, and Barranquilla, the writer concluded that compared to other Latin American destinations, the country falls short on safety, food quality, and cultural richness — while the level of scamming and tourist-targeted dishonesty is higher than regional norms.
"It seems Colombia does nothing particularly well," the traveler wrote. "It's relatively not very safe, the food is mediocre and the level of scamming and dishonesty against tourists is high."
For a country marketing itself on Medellín's transformation narrative and Cartagena's colonial glamour, these are pointed criticisms. And critically, the traveler wasn't cherry-picking: the circuit from Bogotá through the coast and back through Medellín is essentially the greatest-hits itinerary recommended by every major travel publication.
