Worst Tourists

[Phlakes]

Those American families with the ex-football player dad with a plastic wife and a teenage football player son. I was at a resort in St. Croix once, and I was about to rent a kayak but the attendant said the waves were getting too powerful that day and didn't let me. I thanked her anyway and sat by the pool for a bit (the area with the kayaks was right by the pool). A minute or two later, the father and son from that family I mentioned go up to rent one. The attendant tells them the same thing, and they start arguing, with their slurred, testosterone overflowing "has there ever been an accident before?" and "how do you know they're too powerful for us?". I facepalmed hard while the argument kept going on, and they finally gave up and left.

And to top it all off, that night at the resort's restaurant, I saw that dumbass kid leaning against a pillar and trying to stare meaningfully into the sunset with a glass in one hand and the other in his suit pocket. I facepalmed again, then laughed at the irony.

 

[redvenm]

I'm going to say that Russians are the worst tourists. Never came across one that wasn't loud, rude, and arrogant.

 

[Sacman]

Japanese tourist we get a lot of them in California... They always look like their having so much fun... I hate it...<.<

 

[manaman]

I met a gaggle of young Japanese women in Port Angeles once. Port Angeles Washington not exactly being the hot spot of tourism I tried to ask what they where visiting for.

They all just started giggling uncontrollably. Can you believe the audacity? I mean really.

No a more serious note, I never had a problem with a German person in Germany, but about half the guys I met in Seattle where total dicks, with very apologetic girlfriends.

Two Turkish men tried almost hilariously (almost because if you take the molestation factor out it would be) to fondle some young French girls at the Olympic Hot Springs.

Of those same French girls, even after we chased off the Turkish men, two of them where totally self involved bitches. Not even a thank you, seriously. Its the trace of a Southern accent isn't it?

Now that I think about it there really are a lot of tourists to the Olympic Peninsula.

Anyway, as far as the Philippines go, almost everyone I met on vacation had jerkish (haha, my phone keeps trying to correct that to Turkish) tendencies, all but the people from countries nearby. Not like the people themselves where jerks, I just equate to the place. It seems to bring something out of people. I probably wouldn't have noticed, but I stayed with a local family there for quite sometime.

 

[holy_secret]

Germans.
Ive had at least five experiences with them and they've been complete assholes every time. Even in Germany they're famous for being pricks on vacation.

I was in Italy with a female friend of mine. There were some Germans sitting by some stairs we were walking by. Of course they start saying rude things about us.
I let them talk for a while until one said something really rude and I finally turn around and say "Halt die Fresse du verdammter Saupreiß!"
They all went quiet.
Success.
My friend is from austria and I speak fluent Bavarian (a type of dialect of southern Germany).

 

[Iklwa]

I'm from Nebraska, in the middle of the country, so when we got tourists I thought I'd accidentally drank a glass of LSD instead of coffee that morning. They were German, and very polite. They were actually surprised that I could speak German, and thankful that they wouldn't have to butcher English when talking to me.

Also, when I tried to drive to Canada, the Border Crossing guy refused to let me in. Why? "Nebraska isn't a real state, this ID is fake." Yeeeeah....

The only thing that bothers me is when Americans put Canadian Flags on their backpacks to get better treatment abroad. Being a Canadian myself that thought pisses me off.

Also, I always say I'm American. Thus I can help dissuade the apparent stereotypes associated with my country.

 

[Avistew]

The anecdote in the OP is definitely a good recommendation. People generally won't expect you to speak perfectly the language of every country you visit. However, they don't appreciate when they're expected to speak perfectly the language of people who visit them, either.
I've been insulted in the street when I was trying to help someone find their way on a map, and they thought my English wasn't good enough (I'm French). That's definitely annoying because you try to help and they're like "you should speak my language better!"

But a huge majority of tourists are nice and even when they don't speak a word of French they understand your English isn't going to be perfect either, so that's good.

Something else that is a bit annoying is people who don't try to understand that things are different. An annoying thing in McDonald's was customers asking what the price was "in real money", or occasionally in their currency, and not understanding that I had no clue.

Sometimes though it's more about not knowing that the customs are different. For instance in North America someone refills your glass and comes to ask you if everything is going alright. It's considered good service. But I grew up where good service is leaving the customer alone, going to their table when asked, and you leave a jug of water on their table and they fill their own glass.
So it took me a long time to stop finding the North American way extremely rude, and I can imagine it would be similar for people visiting France.

By the way, when asking for water in France, ask for a jug of water, or even say "tap water" or they'll give you mineral water and you'll have to pay for it (unless that's what you want of course). I know a bunch of people who didn't realise that and got upset about it. You CAN get free water in France, you just need to ask for it the right way. It's one of these things that I just know and didn't realise wouldn't be as intuitive for other people.

 

[Dags90]

While I was in Pisa I overheard a woman ask a man "Why would they build the tower all lopsided like that?"

I laughed so fucking hard.

To be fair, the tower is lopsided. It has a slight banana shape to it, to correct for the leaning that happened during the construction. If that's what she meant, it's a reasonable question. I think a lot of people assume the tower was built then leaned, rather than leaned from the get-go.

 

[LarenzoAOG]

While I was in Pisa I overheard a woman ask a man "Why would they build the tower all lopsided like that?"

I laughed so fucking hard.

To be fair, the tower is lopsided. It has a slight banana shape to it, to correct for the leaning that happened during the construction. If that's what she meant, it's a reasonable question. I think a lot of people assume the tower was built then leaned rather than leaned from the get-go.

Whatever, shit was hilariousto me.

 

[Blow_Pop]

I use to work at Disneyland. I'd have to say some of the worst tourists we'd get would be some of the Asian ones. I'm not so good on distinguishing Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, etc....but I know they were Asian. Specifically it would be the families. Not the tour groups. The nicest was a lady from France who just wanted to buy an apple and me knowing enough French to be able to tell her the price, where the apples were, and thank her/tell her have a nice day was a great feeling since no one else at my location knew what the hell had happened....and they all mocked me for wanting to learn French instead of Spanish....And come to think of it Mexican's are the worst since most expect you to know their language in your country. I plan on traveling quite a bit and you can be damn sure I'll know enough of the language to get what I need and maybe hold a decent conversation. /end Disney rant


But yeah long story short, Tourists who come to Disneyland(California Disney, the original park) have been the worst I have encountered.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

I work i

 

[MaxwellEdison]

Eh, not a bad story, just amusing to me.

I was snow boarding (or attempting to, anyways) in my home of Northern California, and was heading down when I saw a group of guys from India, speaking in their own language, and about a minute into their convo someone says "Surf's up dude" in an admittedly well-done beach boy accent, and all of them laugh loudly. I laughed pretty hard too, never seen my area made fun of first hand.

 

[Le_Lisra]

Any tourist is terrible.

Except when its me, obviously. =)

Also: 666 posts. \m/

 

[Xifel]

I work as a cab driver in a Sweden, and in my hometown we get a lot of tourist during the summer due to the fact that the surrounding area is pretty amazing.

I have had some pretty strange tourists in my cab, but a few summer back I had a few Americans that wasn't too nice. They talked about the bad service of my cab company, how expensive it was and that I didn't deserve a tip. This was when they were sitting in my car. I figure they thought I didn't understand what they were saying. It should be noted that I have straight A's in English and have worked as a translator since I was 17.

An other incident with American tourists was trying to speak german to me. I explained that we speak Swedish in Sweden, and that they must confuse us with Switzerland. They then acted surprised that they weren't in Switzerland. I REALLY wanted to ask them how they thought were in Switzerland, considering I picked them up from a cruise ship. But I figured that would only lead to more questions.

My third encounter with American tourists were the couple that asked if we had internet in Sweden. And yes we do: 100 Mbit on our home computers and 8 Mbit in our cellphones.

 

[Xifel]

Ohhh, I think a have to make an amendment and say that Swedish people are horrible tourists, especially in the mediterranean area, and South east Asia. We tend to drink a lot and party too hard.

I apologize for this!

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

When people come here to Aus, they're generally quite polite. I guess they're just afraid we won't save them from the 50m tall spiders if they're rude to us.

 

[Canid117]

At one point I was told by one of the staff members at my hotel that, and I paraphrase, if I was going to butcher their language that the least I could do would be to do it in my own country of shitheads and leave their culture alone.

I would have checked out and gone to a different hotel if I were you and that were an option. If they dont want your money then they should go get fucked. There was a poll a while back that said the French are awful tourists but every Frenchman I have ever met has been either a friend of my father or their family so they always seemed perfectly fine to me.

 

[Kenko]

Outside from their own countries, from what I know. The worst tourists are americans, brits, germans, swedes and in general western citizens. Americans are arrogant, ive seen this myself, treating all of the locals as "lessers" at all times since they are big important americans even though they are some bucktoothed redneck hillbilly halfwits. Brits vary, but they usually just tend to be loud or drunk, not necessarily rude. Swedes are either A: Snobbish assholes. Brunk snobbish asshole trying to fuck anything that moves. And honestly, when I was in Germany I avoided a group of swedes I was about to approach cuz they acted really poorly and pretty much made me ashamed of my nationality.

But like someone else said earlier there are cunts and then there are good natured tourists, the first mentioned being the more common one.

 

[Treeinthewoods]

I assume any tourist smart enough to vacation in Nevada is deserving of respect, very attractive and guaranteed success in life. They may be unfortunate since they don't live here but at least they are smart enough to spend the fun times here.

 

[SilentCom]

I think that a lot of people consider Americans to be the worst tourists however I have also heard that Americans are far from the worst tourists because we're becoming much more conscious of how other people view us. We already send troops to invade other people's countries, why be rude in their restaurants as well?