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On Tuesday morning last week, Italian police officers confronted a 19-year-old tourist at the Leaning Tower of Pisa — not for taking a criminally cliché photo pretending to prop up the tower, but for carving a heart and initials into the priceless structure.
Following her confession at the police station, the French visitor was reported to the public prosecutor’s office for damaging a piece of Italian national heritage, according to the police report.
It wasn’t the first time this summer that a tourist was caught engraving their initials into a UNESCO World Heritage site. It wasn’t even the second or third. Italian police are investigating two separate cases of tourists defacing the Colosseum in Rome — both of which were caught on video. And in July, a 17-year-old Canadian admitted to scratching his name and initials into an 8th-century temple in Japan’s Nara prefecture.
Then there were the less personalized acts of vandalism, like the tourist who allegedly damaged unique geological landforms in China, or the two who climbed into a fountain in northern Italy and destroyed a $220,000 statue. And don’t forget the tourists who keep messing with wild animals at national parks, attacking flight attendants and getting drunk, naked and violent in Bali.
Given the mounting evidence, this feels like the summer of bad tourists. But without a global database of tourist mischief, there isn’t a clear consensus on whether travelers are actually behaving worse than in summers past.
What is clear, according to academics, psychologists and travel industry professionals, is that tourists are frequently going rogue.
Kirsty Sedgman — an academic specializing in human behavior and the author of “On Being Unreasonable: Breaking the Rules and Making Things Better” — says there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest “a growing proportion of people are feeling as if they should be able to do whatever they want,” particularly when it comes to travel.
When people have spent a lot of time and money to plan and take a vacation, Sedgman says they’re more likely to believe they’re entitled to experience it how they like — manners, rules and social norms notwithstanding.
“I call it ‘don’t-tell-me-what-to-do-itis,’” she says. “There’s this real sense of ‘You shouldn’t be allowed to tell me what I should be doing.’”
It’s an issue Catherine Heald, chief executive of the Asia-focused luxury tour operator Remote Lands, is also seeing more of, notably with her Japan itineraries. While she says most of her clients are “really nice,” Heald’s been dealing with more of them throwing fits over local customs — like taking shoes off to walk on tatami mats or abiding by restaurant reservation policies — despite multiple briefings ahead of time.
“They love Japanese food, they want to go to Japan, they want to go to the best restaurants, but they don’t want to follow the rules,” Heald says. “And if we don’t want to follow the rules, we shouldn’t go.”
Former flight attendant Shawn Kathleen, who created the popular Instagram account Passenger Shaming, has noticed a similar sentiment in air travel and vehemently believes the situation is worsening.
“[People] think they have the right to fly and the right to sit where they want and the right to put their feet up on your headrest … but they don’t,” Kathleen says. “The cost of your ticket does not entitle you to treat the airplane as if it’s your living room.”.............
Bonior believes social media plays a huge role shaping how we perceive unruly tourists. Thanks to the speed of the internet and our unquenchable thirst for content, “when this bad behavior happens, we hear about it more,” she says. “Twenty-five years ago, if someone did anything boneheaded, it wouldn’t spread to millions of people.”
However, Bonior says that since the pandemic started, we’re more anxious, our threat response is heightened and we’re more sensitive to what we see as threats and slights. That’s resulted in “diminishing civility and increased coarseness in our culture,” she says. Travelers are lashing out, but the examples span into movie theaters, on Broadway and in concert venues..............
Following her confession at the police station, the French visitor was reported to the public prosecutor’s office for damaging a piece of Italian national heritage, according to the police report.
It wasn’t the first time this summer that a tourist was caught engraving their initials into a UNESCO World Heritage site. It wasn’t even the second or third. Italian police are investigating two separate cases of tourists defacing the Colosseum in Rome — both of which were caught on video. And in July, a 17-year-old Canadian admitted to scratching his name and initials into an 8th-century temple in Japan’s Nara prefecture.
Then there were the less personalized acts of vandalism, like the tourist who allegedly damaged unique geological landforms in China, or the two who climbed into a fountain in northern Italy and destroyed a $220,000 statue. And don’t forget the tourists who keep messing with wild animals at national parks, attacking flight attendants and getting drunk, naked and violent in Bali.
Given the mounting evidence, this feels like the summer of bad tourists. But without a global database of tourist mischief, there isn’t a clear consensus on whether travelers are actually behaving worse than in summers past.
What is clear, according to academics, psychologists and travel industry professionals, is that tourists are frequently going rogue.
Kirsty Sedgman — an academic specializing in human behavior and the author of “On Being Unreasonable: Breaking the Rules and Making Things Better” — says there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest “a growing proportion of people are feeling as if they should be able to do whatever they want,” particularly when it comes to travel.
When people have spent a lot of time and money to plan and take a vacation, Sedgman says they’re more likely to believe they’re entitled to experience it how they like — manners, rules and social norms notwithstanding.
“I call it ‘don’t-tell-me-what-to-do-itis,’” she says. “There’s this real sense of ‘You shouldn’t be allowed to tell me what I should be doing.’”
It’s an issue Catherine Heald, chief executive of the Asia-focused luxury tour operator Remote Lands, is also seeing more of, notably with her Japan itineraries. While she says most of her clients are “really nice,” Heald’s been dealing with more of them throwing fits over local customs — like taking shoes off to walk on tatami mats or abiding by restaurant reservation policies — despite multiple briefings ahead of time.
“They love Japanese food, they want to go to Japan, they want to go to the best restaurants, but they don’t want to follow the rules,” Heald says. “And if we don’t want to follow the rules, we shouldn’t go.”
Former flight attendant Shawn Kathleen, who created the popular Instagram account Passenger Shaming, has noticed a similar sentiment in air travel and vehemently believes the situation is worsening.
“[People] think they have the right to fly and the right to sit where they want and the right to put their feet up on your headrest … but they don’t,” Kathleen says. “The cost of your ticket does not entitle you to treat the airplane as if it’s your living room.”.............
Bonior believes social media plays a huge role shaping how we perceive unruly tourists. Thanks to the speed of the internet and our unquenchable thirst for content, “when this bad behavior happens, we hear about it more,” she says. “Twenty-five years ago, if someone did anything boneheaded, it wouldn’t spread to millions of people.”
However, Bonior says that since the pandemic started, we’re more anxious, our threat response is heightened and we’re more sensitive to what we see as threats and slights. That’s resulted in “diminishing civility and increased coarseness in our culture,” she says. Travelers are lashing out, but the examples span into movie theaters, on Broadway and in concert venues..............
