Don't Shoot The Messenger

There seems to be a survey about every subject under the sun these days. The one I read about recently is a report about tourists that visit Spain, mostly concentrating on those who come here during summer. In recent years though they come pretty much throughout the year, with the tour operators more conscientious in providing a lot more so called theme-holidays, covering far wider range of choices, combining culture, culinary, painting, sketching, architecture, historic sites; or the ones combining tuition in languages, cooking, dancing the flamingo or guitar playing ... You name it, they supply it.

Back to the survey. 15,000 hotels all over Europe took part in finding out tourists of what nationalities are well liked & which ones are not, and why. The findings are rather amusing.

• For instance, the Americans who years before chewed gum & ignored all native culture & language, look only for fast food restaurants " like the ones back home ", have apparently changed & now set off in search of culture armed with the pocket phrase book. They are also the biggest spenders & good tippers together with the Russians. So they are now placed on top of the list.
• But the most loved tourists are Japanese, polite, quiet, easily pleased & never complain. Also generous tippers. The Chinese share the same accolade. They come 2nd.
• The Swiss, friendly & courteous, come 3rd, German come 5th, but are labelled very poor tippers. The only tourists who are worse in that respect are the French & the Italian.
• Dress sense, not a strong point either with the German, only beaten at the bottom of the list by the British & the Americans. Sandals with socks & entering restaurants in beach clothes, some with bare wet feet. As they had always done in the past.
• When it comes to bad manners & lack of respect to locals, the British & the Russian share the same recognition, & are placed at the bottom of the list.
• As to the Spanish, when they are abroad, they nearly never tip so they come 4th from the last. But they are thought to be always elegant & they come 4th in the best liked category. They are also considered very loud in public.
• The most unpopular who scored the least in every category are the French. They have no interest in the local language, rarely tip, & are usually unfriendly & sometimes aggressive. They were placed last at 28th.
• Most of the findings are echoed as well by those whose main business is solely or mainly connected with tourism.

 

I am sure many of you might not agree at all with some or all of these but, please don't shoot the messenger; I am only telling what the survey says.