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Expedia survey rates the world's worst tourists

by Abha Malpani on Jun 25th 2008 at 8:30AM

The French, Indians, and the Chinese have been voted as the world's worst tourists by a group of 4000 hoteliers, in a survey conducted by online travel search engine Expedia. On the other hand, the best tourists are 1) Japanese 2) British and Germans.

Yup, looks like the annoying and continuous photo taking of everything in sight by the Japanese, and the drunken stag parties of the British and the Germans do not lay room for complaint, thanks to their wonderful behavior, manners, generosity, willingness to integrate themselves into a new culture -- criteria on which the nationalities were rated.

Interestingly enough, a similar survey was conducted by Expedia 6 years ago and it tagged the British, Danish and Irish as the worst. The British were voted as the "rudest, worst-behaved, most linguistically incompetent and least adventurous holiday makers." Ouch. What's for that drastic change from best to worst?

Anyway, I hate such generalizations because I think an entire race can't be blamed for the misdoings of a bunch of people. Surveys like this are interesting insight, but nothing more.

Filed under: News

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Ed Jun 25th 2008 8:39AM

Are you paid for this stuff?

"in site"

"and the drunken stag parties of the British and the Germans do not lay room for complain"

"and it tagged the British, Danish and Irish were the worst."

Abha Jun 25th 2008 9:06AM

Ed: My apologies, I published this post without proof reading. Thanks for the alert.

TravelBot Jun 25th 2008 4:31PM

Maybe they've let the copy editors go.

Ed Jun 26th 2008 11:32AM

Sorry Abha, was in a venty mood, thx for fixing it!

I'm British and I think we 're a nation of contrasts - beer-swilling yobs half-the-time, overly-polite pompous buffoons the rest of the time! That might explain the schizophrenic surveys!

Emma Leigh Jun 25th 2008 10:20AM

I'm glad that Americans weren't named as the worst. When I visited France a couple of years I was so self conscious and didn't want to give a bad impression. I hate the expression "Ugly American."

Japanese tourists that I have come in contact with are always polite and are very neat. The only group of travelers that I have encountered that were less than fun to travel with were a semi-pro sports team. They were loud and rowdy and thought they were on a charter flight.

I think on any given day any group could be labeled "the worst" depending on the circumstances.

(BTW, I don't come here for an English lesson. I visit for interesting stories about travel.)

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