Britons Voted World’s Worst Tourists

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by Arrian
Old? *boggle* I suppose they would be older, on average, than Brits or other European tourists because it costs more to get from the US to Europe than it does to travel from one European country to another. I was 20, though, so I buck the "old" trend if there is one.

Yes that's one reason. Most Americans coming to Europe are not so young compared with other tourists.

But this is not the only reason. Americans seem to have an ingraned respect for the foreign country's culture.

Again there are no abolutes.

[Bereta_Eder]

As for Brits or whoever getting wasted and behaving like maniacs... it doesn't happen all over the place.

Actually there are secluded areas where this happens I think.

Like in a concert where people can smoke some herb with the police looking the other way...

The problem begins when they start behaving badly outside this confined space.

Also, these are not the tourists that leave the big bucks, contrary to Mobius opinion.

Most of those people are the infamous backbackers. They will try not to spend a dime if it's possible.

Actually there has been a re-orientation of the Greek at least tourist industry to discourage backbackers and encourage more wealthy or spending oriented tourists to come to Greece.

It has been calculated that they create more trouble than GDP

But yes the police has been lax in controlling them in the past at least.

[Seneca]

To be fair on backpackers, they're mostly backpacking because they can't afford to do anything else.

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by Seneca
To be fair on backpackers, they're mostly backpacking because they can't afford to do anything else.

That is not necessairily true IMO. Many of them have money but they just want to try and get by without paying almost anything.

I always respect the honest, true backpacker

[Bereta_Eder]

Also something else, only remotely related.

Rampant tourism has some "funny" side effects.

I remember in some places in Rhodes and Crete it was like I was in a twilight zone...

Everything, all the signs (restaurants etc) were written in english and german.

I thought I was in another country. The trees, the sun the beaches, the sand roads were all there but that was pretty much all of it.

I was thinking am I in Greece anymore, or did something happene?

Also there were cases where when your fellow countryman realized you are a Romeos too (old name for a Greek) he would just write you off and attend to the foreign tourists which he thought would leave more money.


It was funny when the foreign tourism suffered some years back, they started again to pay some attention to poor old us

The people in the tourism industry have it the best BTW. They work for only 3 months a year and they get the money one would get from working all year long.

And they have abandoned their old jobs... may that be industry or most of the time farming. Huge areas of Greece have been left unattended since tourism generates much more money tothese people now.

But what happens if tourism suddendly slides down and stays down?


Also it creates many more funnies. In the islands near Athens, the young Greeks (say 18 years old) will start working in tourism and will earn sums. 5 times more than what their old parents make...

So a young person with 500.000 drachmas a month has no use for school, or education, becomes abnoxious, gets into drugs just for the hell of it since he's so strong and financially independent and often leaves a promising future for a short lived richness with no guarantees.

I remember a girl who lived in one of these islands telling me that she is actually the freak around here for wanting to go to the university and not working for tourist industry and earning money like many of the people of her age do.

Not that the tourist waves of almost 8 million people per year in Greece have not big benefits but there are funny twists to the story as well, as anyone would imagine.

[Seneca]

So for the good of Greece, we tourists should tip less, so that university becomes a more attractive option.

OK then!

[Bereta_Eder]

Exactly and you should also stop polluting our bodily fluids.

I hope that was a joke since that's not the moral teaching of what I said. (if there even was one )

It's just what happens. As to what can be done... another priest's evangelion.

Actually not so many people going to universities is not all that bad. They are way too many going just to find themselves unemploiyed later. (you can have only so many doctors and laywers )

[Bereta_Eder]

Plus that happens in the heavily touristic resorts with a very small local population.

Considering that almost half of the population of Greece lives in Athens, I wouldn't say that the tourists' tips screw up Greece's national education policies.

It is about what happens in several microcosms which adorn the country, which in no way makes it "less important" IMO.