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Perhaps us Brits abroad aren't the thuggish lot I'd been led to believe we were. We're endlessly told that we're hooliganistic, drunken, linguistically-impaired, impolite and holiday accident prone. Yet it seems that this view should be up for revision if a recent survey by tour operator Expedia is to be believed.
4,500 hotels from across the globe participated in the survey, voting British tourists second from top in the list of World's Best Tourists. While we did come second to the Japanese, who were praised for their politeness and neatness, it surely is an honour to come so near the top and something that should help counter the myth that we are the "world's worst travellers".
And, yes, it was only hoteliers that participated in the study, but they as much as anyone are going to know how well different nationalities carry themselves while in foreign environments
Oh, but having just had a closer look at the press release, I realise there is a depressingly familiar catch to this piece of otherwise good news: Europeans voted us as the worst behaved when abroad.
Expedia's head of product marketing, Jonathon Cudworth, comments, "Being voted the worst tourists in the world by our closest neighbours highlights the fact that the 'Brits Abroad' moniker is a label we still haven't managed to shrug off.
"While we are in second place in the global best-tourist rankings, we clearly have a job to do to convince our European counterparts and those at home that we can be better behaved on holiday."
It is interesting that there should be such a discrepancy between the Europe-specific and world views on the UK tourist. Does it tell us something about ourselves, perhaps about the type of UK tourist who prefers to holiday in Europe?
Maybe it's simply that we are more carefree when holidaying relatively close to home, so indulge in the sort of reckless and arrogant behaviour that invites suffering some form of holiday accident or another. Or could the discrepancy perhaps tell us something about the anti-British sentiment of many Europeans?
Whatever the case, I'm just glad we're not viewed as negatively as the French. Worldwide they were voted as the worst tourists for their "rudeness", "meanness", "arrogance" and "shockingly poor linguistic ability". Oh well, at least they can comfort themselves with the knowledge that they usually cause offence in an elegant fashion, coming as they did third in the elegance stakes.
What the list doesn't tell us is anything about how which nationality makes the most holiday accident claims. For that we'd need personal injury solicitors from across the globe to pool their respective experiences into a worldwide database, and experience suggests that simply isn't going to happen soon.
