Despite an Expedia survey suggesting Germans were the world's most popular tourists, anecdotal evidence seems to suggest the opposite. In a BBC Talking Point forum, German tourists were frequently mentioned. Of course, there are a whole stack of German tourists out there, increasing the probability that they'll annoy somebody, somewhere.
Excuses aside, apparently it is not only their habit of putting their towels on pool chairs before dawn that's considered very annoying: a traveler who'd backpacked around Asia said they'd seen a lot of German tourists "treating the Asians quite rudely". A tourist worker from Bali described German tourists as the most arrogant on the planet, and someone who'd worked in a London restaurant near a major tourist attraction said "the rudest tourists tended to be either very young or very old Germans".
One commenter even said they had "caught a German stealing from the tip plate on the bar more than once in Tunisia". We've heard Germans are supposed to be stingy, but stealing from the tip plate?!
Seeing hoards of Chinese tourists is still a relatively recent phenomenon, and it seems the Chinese themselves are still learning how to be tourists. That might explain why they came in third on an Expedia survey of the world's worst tourists. Chinese tourists were also voted "most reluctant to sample foreign food". Perhaps because there's always a Chinese restaurant wherever you go?
But luckily the Chinese foreign ministry is onto the problem. They've issued guidelines to help Chinese tourists learn appropriate behaviors. The main advice is to:
Keep peaceful in public places, don't talk loud and avoid sticking out. Don't get involved in other people's quarrels in public places.
The ministry stops short of suggesting Chinese tourists should show a more adventurous spirit with their menu choices, but one step at a time.
We thought we'd heard all we could about the world's worst tourists. That is until we came across a BBC discussion from a couple of years back said that it's not only British holidaymakers to watch out for: Israelis join them at the top (or bottom?) of the list. According to workers in the tourist industry who joined the discussion, Israeli tourists can be noisy, arrogant and obnoxious. An amusement park employee had this to say:
I work at Disneyland and come in contact with tourists from all over the world on a daily basis. My co-workers and I all agree that Israelis are the most consistently rude tourists we have the misfortune to deal with.
Another commenter said they'd heard guides in Thailand who show around groups of Israeli tourists are paid double "because it's such hard work!" At this point, we're not sure which country can brag that its tourists are the absolute worst, but it's surprising just how many nationalities are in the running. Perhaps we should do away with tourists altogether?
While we've been wondering about the bad-tourist-factor of Indians and British, Expedia's recent survey results actually put the French at the top of the World's Worst Tourists list. They overtook the British (long holders of the crown), because:
Although the British were noted for their poor tipping, bad behaviour, poor dress sense, untidiness, and noisy nature they were no match for the French tourists' unwillingness to speak local languages, tight-fistedness and impoliteness.
And really, how can we disagree with all that? Better make French the real international language if we want to continue enjoying holidays in Paris.
There's no doubt that the poor British pop up constantly in surveys of bad tourists, and the whole pre-wedding-get-really-drunk-party in Budapest or Vilnius thing hasn't helped in the last few years. But a recent Expedia survey suggested that the French are pretty bad tourists, and that Indians are the world's second worst tourists.
Naturally, the Indians are protesting. Columnist Antara Dev Sen uses the argument that tourist boards are advertising across India to encourage Indians to travel to their countries, so surely these countries want them to visit. (She's forgotten, perhaps, that tourist boards just want to bring money into the country, and the quality of tourist is less important.) But really, she says, Indian tourists just like to have fun on their holidays:
Take the British Museum, for example ... Wherever you look you'll see little Indian kids running about breathlessly, swinging from those old statues and all, clambering onto those broken pillars and playing with the dead stuff. But the British are too strict, baba! They always come and shoo them away!
She goes on to discuss the Indian habit of drying clothes across hotel room furniture, singing in tourist buses and setting up their cookers wherever they're hungry. We can't imagine how they got voted the world's second worst tourists.
Those know-it-alls when it comes to what consumers want--J. D. Power and Associates--have just released their rankings of the best airports in the US. Though "terminal facilities" was a part of the survey, free airport WiFi access obviously wasn't a priority, given the results.
The top-rated large airport was DFW, which we know indirectly charges for internet through a partnership with T-Mobile. Houston Hobby--the jefe of small airports--makes you pay through a deal with Sprint. That leaves only mid-sized airport champ KCI as the one with free WiFi. (But we knew that.)
Maybe we should explain ourselves again? We're not advocating for free WiFi at airports just because we blog and don't like to pay for things. It's a service that should be part of what we buy with the passenger facility fees we pay every time we buy an airline ticket--in our opinion. You wouldn't pay $9.95 for a "day pass" to use the bathroom at an airport would you?
The travel booking folks at Expedia have published the results of a large survey about the best and worst tourists. And it turns out that those bowing, camera-toting Japanese are officially the "best" tourists, mostly due to their politeness and tidiness. Americans and Swiss come in second and third on the overall scale.
In other awards ... the biggest spenders on holidays are Americans, followed by Russians and Brits. But Brits lose out in another category, being crowned the second-worst-dressed of tourists: after the worst dressed Americans. And when measuring the generosity scale, the Pfennig-pinching Germans came up as the least generous tourists.
And we can't leave you without whispering the results of who make the worst tourists: apparently the French are the worst, followed by Indians, Chinese and Russian. Of course, this is all a bit biased by the fact that the 15,000 respondents were hoteliers in Europe, so don't be offended. Unless you belong to a worst-dressed nation and then perhaps you need to spend more Euro shopping in stylish Italy.
Morgan Quitno Press, a private researching and publishing company specializing in city reference books, says St. Louis is the most dangerous city for 2006, though the study doesn't account for the suburbs.
Somewhat interestingly, last week we sat next to a St. Louisian on a flight to Boston who told us that the city of St. Louis was in the midst of massive out flight and urban decay. He suggested that most urban professionals had long since fled the city for the comfort of the surrounding suburbs, though these folks still claimed to be from St. Louis. Does that skew the survey?
Since Nelly always released candy-ass hip hop about being from the Lou, we never really took St. Louis for any more than a faux hardcore city with a giant arch. Hey, must be the money. Looks like we may have to change our thinking. A quick web search shows that under the Kingshighway bridge and anywhere near the Hill are not places the St. Louis tourism board want you to know about.
Oh, and on South Grand, apparently things are so bad graffiti artists are begging for the dinosaurs to return and restore order. Enjoy that parade, Cardinal fans.
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by amandak
