Perche

Certainly there is room for various opinions, but i wouldn't say that the average person would consider Naples to be a dump, or Sorrento to be an oasis. Certainly, Italian people don't feel that way. It depends on what you are looking for. I can guarantee, you aren't going to find many Italians who consider Sorrento to be good place to visit.

Sorrento is a small town where many large cruise ships dock. They can't dock on shore because the harbor isn't suited for it, but they get brought in on smaller boats. One can say something similar about Venice, but Venice is large enough to avoid all of that overwhelming sense of being in a tourist trap, and if you go away from San Marco, will be in authentic Italy.

You can spend 4 days in Sorrento and not even here Italian spoken. Just primarily english and german. There are some nice views of the sea, but of course, no beach. There's a small main street, it just has shop after shop after shop selling tourist kitsch, mostly made in China, factory made limoncello, fake gelato, etc., to the tourists getting off the cruise ships. The restaurant owners are not searching for the finest ingredients to serve to the tourists who are there today, gone tomorrow.

I don't want to knock anyone's vacation memories or plans, but going to Sorrento is like coming to the USA, with all of the great Americana to explore, and instead, just going to Disneyland or Universal Studios. It's a fake aspect of what it is really like in Italy. There's hardly a town in Sorrento anymore, just trinket shops and hotels. That's not Italy.

It's arguably worse than Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre was a a series of small, undiscovered towns 25-30 years ago when I first went there. I lived in Seattle and Rick Steves was just starting to do small tours out of his shop in Edmonds. Now because of his enormous talent and charisma, everyone goes there, even though they are not the best places on the Italian Riviera. You certainly won't get to relax there, you'll inch your way through. Try walking around Vernazza or Manarola in the summer. You might as well be in the USA in terms of how American the experience is, standing in a Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. The buildings may be beautiful if you can bear up to seeing them packed shoulder to shoulder with people, and eating what really amounts to the equivalent of Italian fast food served in the restaurants.

They're mainly popular because of Rick Steves TV shows and books, but right down the road they're are towns that are just as nice or even better, and still undiscovered and uncrowded. Golfo Paradiso is also five towns, far easier to reach than Cinque Terre, and it is not packed with touristsas are the towns of Cinque Terre. If Rick Steves had chosen these towns such as Pieve Ligue, Camogli, and Bogliasco as his Ligurian spots, They might be swarmed with tourists and Cinque Terre would be as empty as they are today.

I admit that Sorrento has some rationale as a step-off place to see Pompeii and a few other places, but there are way better places to be, where you might even get to hear the Italian language spoken.

So I agree there is room for differences of opinion. Some people want to follow the crowd, eat what's on the menu. Others, if they're second or third generation, have parents that came from Naples and Sicily before the first WW. For 2nd to 3rd generation Italian Americans, Italy doesn't even begin until you hit Naples. Most other Italian Americans came in the 1850's, from the Genova region.

Naples is Italy's third largest city. It's not a cruise port. It has real people, real stores, real food, real museums, symphony, opera. No one who has ever walked around the Lungomare during sunset would ever call it a dump, as the view beats Sorrento's hands down.

It's not a city where you go to a restaurant and the couples around you are all American, with a few Brits, Germans, and others, and you are eating fast food or frozen food, without knowing it. The food is some of the best in Italy. Unlike Sorrento, the hotels and restaurants of Naples don't close down when the cruise ships stop coming in the Fall. The restaurants and hotels don't get boarded up, because it's a functional, regular city.

Some people like the tour bus experience, to buy souvenirs made in China, to eat the food they eat at home at Olive Garden and Macaroni Grill. Others go because they want to know Italy, taste Italian food, and interact with Italians, and experience Italy. I challenge anyone to do that in tourist central Sorrento.

As you said, a matter of opinion.