Sono nove anni che Epedia realizza una inchiesta sul modo di usufruire delle ferie. E’ una inchiesta che ha grande risonanza sui media.
I più vacanzieri si confermano i francesi, seguiti da canadesi e svedesi. Gli italiani sono leader di giorni di ferie avanzati e per non sfrutture tutti i giorni disponibili.
Qui il Time l’anno scorso.
Given their nation’s long reign as the world’s most visited country, you’d expect the French to know a thing or two about insufferable tourists. It turns out they do — and are proving it to the rest of the world. In a poll carried out by online travel site Expedia and released on Thursday, July 9, French tourists were viewed as the orneriest for the third year running.
(Read TIME’s story on last year’s poll.)
Affirmation-starved France usually loves global titles of any kind (one big reason French competitors tend to outnumber foreign rivals in quixotic contests like reverse round-the-world solo yachting races and France’s annual international plumb-spitting tournaments). But the news that les français had kept their crown as the world’s most troublesome tourists provoked a collective Gallic shriek. “The French Are the Worst Tourists on Earth,” blared the website for Libération above a story on this year’s survey. “Do French Tourists Abroad Do Their Country Honor?” radio-news station France Info asked as it invited listeners to debate the survey’s findings online. (The consensus? Not really, though despite the poll’s contention, forum posters concurred that few tourists of any nationality ever impress locals as model visitors.)
So what specifically are French voyagers faulted for? The Expedia poll says French travelers are the biggest skinflints, the worst tippers and the least able or inclined to speak foreign languages. They also finished next to last in terms of their politeness and behavior. (The worst offenders in both those categories were — wait for it — Americans, who were also designated most likely to complain.)
Even where it did score well in the survey, Team France suffered stinging humiliation. Not only were the French denied the Best Dressed championship by the Italians, for example, but they lost second spot to the Brits — whose fashion sense is usually likened to that of the poll’s slob champs, the Yanks. France’s fourth-place finish for “Most Quiet” was tarnished by the Wagnerian-lunged Germans’ walking off with the bronze.
(See pictures of East Germany making light of its past.)
As the chagrined French reaction (and TIME.com’s coverage of the 2008 poll) shows, the Expedia survey gets a lot of attention. This year’s best-ranked tourists — the Japanese were followed by English, Canadian, German and Swiss travelers — are likely to point proudly to the outcome as a paragon of scientific accuracy. But this third annual bruising of French pride should be taken with a pinch of salt. There are several aspects of the survey that make its methodology suspect — and results significantly skewed. The poll ranks 27 nations’ travelers over nine behavioral categories. But it questioned just 4,500 respondents, all of whom work in hotels around the world. That probably cuts out people who meet less-refined backpacking hostel denizens, campers and legions of Winnebago warriors.
(See 10 things to do in Tokyo.)
Moreover, because the lingua franca of international hotel staffs is English, notoriously monolingual Americans, Brits and Australians probably rank higher than they should. The French readily volunteer that their practice of foreign languages leaves much to be desired, but even the harshest Francophobe would mock the poll’s finding that the average Yank tourist is the better polyglot. At least that’s what French travelers might argue.
See TIME’s Pictures of the Week.
See pictures of Paris at LIFE.com.
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Remember the tightwad tourist whose baggy shorts, frequent complaining and shouted questions about why none of the locals spoke any English made the ugly American the world’s Visitor from Hell? Well, it’s time for Archie Bunker to move over and make way for Petulant Pierre. According to a recent international survey, the French are now considered the most obnoxious tourists from European nations, behind only Indians and the last-place Chinese as the worst among countries worldwide. And it’s not just the rest of the world that has a gripe with the Gallic attitude: the French also finished second to last among nations ranking the popularity of their own tourists who vacation at home.
But it’s the unflattering image being reflected from abroad that may give pause to the millions of French travelers now heading off to summer-vacation destinations across the globe. Will this move them to improve behavior the poll characterized as impolite, prone to loud carping and inattentive to local customs? If so, that’s just the start: the study also describes the voyageur français as often unwilling or unable to communicate in foreign languages, and particularly disinclined to spend money when they don’t have to — including those non compris tips. Overall, French travelers landed 19th out of 21 nations worldwide, far behind the first-place Japanese, considered the most polite, quiet and tidy. Following the Japanese as most-liked tourists were the Germans, British and Canadians. Americans finished in 11th place alongside the Thais.(See pictures of the Eiffel Tower.)
The survey was taken by employees in 4,000 hotels in Germany, the U.K., Italy, France, Canada and the U.S. for the French travel website Expedia.fr. The study asked respondents to rank clients by nationality on criteria of general attitude, politeness, tendency to complain, willingness to speak local languages, interest in sampling local cuisine, readiness to spend money, generosity, cleanliness, discretion and elegance. Many replies simply conformed to long-established reputations: Italians, for example, were described as the best-dressed tourists, with the French not far behind.
American tourists fared well in some surprising ways. Despite being notoriously language-limited, for example, they top the list of tourists credited with trying to speak local languages the most, with the French, Chinese, Japanese, Italians and Russians coming in last in the local-language rankings. Does this mean Americans are the most polyglot tourists on the planet? Maybe not, says Expedia’s marketing director for Europe, Timothée de Roux, who says the poll’s focus on hotel operators may explain the counterintuitive outcome.(See 10 things to do in Beijing.)
“Most hotel staffs around the world speak English, meaning they’ll communicate far more easily with native English-speaking American or British clients than with French or Italians who — it’s true — are pretty bad with foreign languages,” de Roux says.
De Roux says external factors similarly account for why Americans wound up as the biggest-spending and best-tipping tourists, while Germans and the French were among the worst penny-pinchers. “Our findings show the average French employee will get 37 vacation days spread over seven trips in 2008, versus 14 for an American — who won’t even take them all,” de Roux says. “That means the French tourist will more tightly budget his or her spending over more trips, while the American spends freely on the one or two vacations taken all year.”(See 50 authentic American travel experiences.)
By contrast, the poll finds that the French and Americans are similar in being perceived as critical and rude when they travel — though for different reasons. The same attractions that make France the world’s top destination for 92 million foreign visitors each year, says de Roux, also explain why more than 85% of French citizens vacation in-country — and wind up spoiled by it when they leave. “When they go abroad, French travelers demand the same quality they’d get at home,” de Roux says. “Americans, by contrast, demand the same exceptional service they are used to at home, which is why they rank as the loudest, most inclined to complain and among the least polite.”
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1820358,00.html#ixzz0s8s8AIbT
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1909526,00.html#ixzz0s8qXLgYG
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