Best and Worst Tourists

Morbyd

Morbyd

Moderator
Expedia.co.uk just released a survey of 15000 European hoteliers as to who are the best and worst tourists. Some highlights, courtesy of the Press Association:
JAPANESE TOP GOOD TOURISTS LEAGUE


By Peter Woodman, PA Travel Correspondent

Britons are the fifth-worst tourists in the world, according to a survey from Expedia.co.uk.

:: The best tourists in the world were the Japanese, who were considered polite and tidy.

:: The worst were the French, who were unwilling to speak the local language, ungenerous and impolite.

:: Americans were the worst-dressed tourists followed by Britons, with Italians, French and Spanish the best dressed.

:: The Japanese were also the best behaved, beating the Germans and the Americans, who came top for their behaviour in a similar survey published in 2002.

:: The British, Russians and Danes were cited as having the worst behaviour.

:: The Americans are no longer the most polite, slipping to third place since 2002. The Japanese are now the most polite, while British manners have improved significantly from last place to second this year.

:: The Americans have changed their approach to travelling and now rank highest for attempting to speak the local language.

:: The Italians are the loudest on holiday, followed by the Americans and the British, while the Japanese, Chinese and Swiss are the quietest.

:: The Germans are the perfect guests, tidying up before their chambermaid arrives.
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I read 2 different newspaper versions of this article (Moscow Times and Daily Telegraph) and it's interesting to see how they differ in focus.

The Russians are the 4th worst tourists overall (and the 2nd worst behaved), but they rank second to the Americans in spending so there's a silver lining as far as the hotels are concerned :lol:

The Brits have done well to improve... still the worst behaved and not much better dressed than the Americans, but at least they're only 5th worst overall as opposed to absolute worst when this survey was last done 5 years ago.

But most surprising to me is the change in attitude (or is it perception?) of the Americans. Apparently, despite being horribly dressed and unnecessarily loud (I can pick out my fellow yanks a mile away :lol:), my countrymen are very well behaved and spend lots of money. Only the Japanese beat us!

And, apparently, Americans are trying to speak foreign languages 8O Things must have changed since I left home!
 
The Italians are the loudest on holiday,
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Never a truer word spoken there 8OIm surprised there's no mention of Irish seen as they are renowned for travelling everywhere.

I actually think Aussies out of everyone would probably do the most travelling worldwide, most Aussies are sound anyway.:)
 
:: The worst were the French, who were unwilling to speak the local language, .
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That's not true, when the French were here for the Rugby a few months ago they all spoke English allbeit not very good but made an effort, that title has got to belong to the UK and if the truth be known a lot of Irish would be the same.:?
 
Morbyd said:
Expedia.co.uk just released a survey of 15000 European hoteliers as to who are the best and worst tourists. Some highlights, courtesy of the Press Association:


I read 2 different newspaper versions of this article (Moscow Times and Daily Telegraph) and it's interesting to see how they differ in focus.

The Russians are the 4th worst tourists overall (and the 2nd worst behaved), but they rank second to the Americans in spending so there's a silver lining as far as the hotels are concerned :lol:

The Brits have done well to improve... still the worst behaved and not much better dressed than the Americans, but at least they're only 5th worst overall as opposed to absolute worst when this survey was last done 5 years ago.

But most surprising to me is the change in attitude (or is it perception?) of the Americans. Apparently, despite being horribly dressed and unnecessarily loud (I can pick out my fellow yanks a mile away :lol:), my countrymen are very well behaved and spend lots of money. Only the Japanese beat us!

And, apparently, Americans are trying to speak foreign languages 8O Things must have changed since I left home!
Click to expand...
That is a big change, maybe the village idiots are staying home. IMO I see people from every country who travel abroad put their worst foot forward at times except the Japanese. I am gutted anytime I see Americans act like a**ses. Maybe I notice the Americans faster then other nations. I went on a tour of Italy with a Spanish group and I thought OMG is this your first time out of the country. I noticed them more because I was with them and wanted them to be on good behavior. This is not a slam of Spanish just the Idiots that were on my tour. I think the leap from Italian to Spanish is small (IMO)they would not make the effort. I dreaded every time we went out, a smaller group of Spanish and I grouped together as we were embarrassed. I was shocked by these peoples behavior, I was like oh SH1T they are acting like the ugly Americans I used to see.
 
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Japanese might be most polite but many of their tours are so precisely planned, they have no time to do anything else.. going to Canada for 5 days, seeing Vancouver, the Rocky mountains, Toronto, Niagara Falls, and Montreal is not uncommon.

When I lived in Japan a teacher at my school went to Egypt for a long weekend.

Traveling in Japan, on a Japanese tour (which I had to do once when living there) was one of the worst experiences of my life... ever!
 
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I know it's a bad stereotype but everytime I see Japanese tour groups on Red Square it's cameras galore :lol:

djjaycool said:
That is a big change, maybe the village idiots are staying home. IMO I see people from every country who travel abroad put their worst foot forward at times except the Japanese. I am gutted anytime I see Americans act like a**ses. Maybe I notice the Americans faster then other nations.
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I know how you feel... living abroad, and specifically in Europe, has given us a somewhat different view of the world and so it's both frustrating and embarassing to see when our countrymen misbehave or show some level of ignorance.

But now that I think about it, I haven't noticed the "ugly Americans" as much when traveling in recent years. Perhaps there's been a change in the type of people who go overseas? Who knows... But you can still pick Americans out of a crowd with their backpacks, baseball caps and overall girth :? (thus the worst dressed moniker!)
 
Maybe cos Catalan / Spanish is so close to french that we understand each other easely, I think most people here would say that worst tourists are the ones from east countries who expect you to speak their funny languages and usually has the prepotence of new richs.

Morbyd, I always find the amercian tourists very nice and polite, if they are not in big groups and we forget the stylism :lol:


IMO the worst tourists are the ones in big groups, spaniards in travel tour sounds like hell to me (a travel tour sounds sounds like a nightmare). DJCool, I disagree with you, I think italians and spanish have very few to see, maybe the only common thing is the dress sense and that we are noisy and we talk loud, but IMO stereotypical characters are very differents
 
What about the bloomin' eskimos?

Swanning aroung, cutting circular holes in the ground everywhere, near misses with snowmobiles, whale meat srewn all over, honestly you know when the pesky inuits have been in town.
 
MARKB said:
What about the bloomin' eskimos?

Swanning aroung, cutting circular holes in the ground everywhere, near misses with snowmobiles, whale meat srewn all over, honestly you know when the pesky inuits have been in town.
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Hey! I've been to see the Eskimos. Nice people all around!
 
there was a tv progrme called The Tourist Trap i think a good few years ago.

the ideas was to put groups of tourists of diffferent nationalities in situations with hidden cameras to see how they would react...

eg. there was one where a barman left the bar unattended.... and someone went and helped themselves to drinks behind the bar.

the japanaese were horrified / embarrassed whereas the brits all went and helped themselves too....:D

although if could be seen as stereotyping nationalities, it was quite interesting
 
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