French Judged the Worst Tourists in World So Who Are the Best?

Expedia Survey
The Expedia Best Tourist Index, running annually since 2002, gauges the opinions of over 4,500 hoteliers worldwide to rank different nationalities on their behaviour abroad - everything from spending habits to their willingness to try and speak the local language.

Global research was carried out on behalf of Expedia by TNS, June 10 - June 23 2009 on 4,557 hoteliers worldwide focusing on Europe, the Americas (North and South America), Africa and Asia Pacific.

The Worst
Hoteliers named the French as the world's worst tourists. As well as being the most frugal and meanest tippers, they can also lay claim to being among the rudest tourists in Europe, with a tenth of hoteliers citing them as most impolite.

The Best
The Index reveals that the Japanese are far and away the world's best tourists, scoring highly not only as the quietest and most polite but also the cleanest and least likely to complain.

How Did Brits Fare?
British tourists have been named as the worst behaved in Europe. For the third year running, Europeans have also voted the Brits messy, bad tippers and very likely to complain.

While the Europeans are critical of British holidaymakers, the rest of the world paints a different picture. For the second consecutive year, British holidaymakers are runners-up overall in the worldwide Best Tourist rankings. A fifth (18%) of those surveyed commended the Brits for their politeness, while those from the UK were ranked second in the best behaved category and most generous nationality, although trounced here by the Americans who comfortably stormed in to first place.

Bouquets and Brickbats
Worldwide, the Japanese, British, Canadians, Germans and Australians are considered the most polite nations.

The top 3 loudest nations are the Americans, Italians and Spanish.

After the Americans and the British, the next biggest tippers are the Germans and the Japanese.

Canadians, Australians and Swiss were the other top five nationalities named as least likely to complain.

2009 Expedia Best Tourist Global Index
1 Japanese
2 British
3 Canadians
4 Germans
5 Swiss
6= Dutch
6= Australians
8= Swedish
8= Americans
10= Danes
10= Norwegians
10= Finnish
10= Belgians
14= Austrians
14= New Zealanders
16 Thais
17= Portuguese
17= Czechs
19= Italians
19= Irish
19= Brazilians
22= Polish
22= South Africans
24= Turkish
24= Greeks
26 Spanish
27 French

Dr Geoff Pound

Geoff can be contacted on email at geoffpound(at)gmail.com and on Facebook and Twitter.