by A gondola crashed in Venice. Body fluids on economy flights. Destroyed heritage sites. Completely freed from pandemic restrictions, the world traveled en masse this year and did so with fervor. Most destinations reported visitor numbers on par with 2019 levels; The Middle East exceeded pre-pandemic numbers by 20 percent. And yet this enthusiasm for travel was not received with the deference one might expect.
In fact, manners were noticeably absent. Videos taken by airline passengers showed bad behavior far beyond the usual complaints: extreme seat reclining was a comparatively minor infraction. It gets worse.
There were the obscene ones, like the couple caught on a mid-air tryst by easyJet staff (they were greeted with laughter from other passengers and a police escort upon landing). And there was the dangerous part: on a Ryanair flight to Manchester, a man was arrested for smoking a cigarette in the bathroom.
Then there was the disgusting thing. We’re told (if you’re eating, skip to the next paragraph) that faeces were found on the bathroom floor on another EasyJet flight, leading to its cancellation. Passengers on a Delta flight were in for something even more horrendous, as their plane was forced to land early after a “messy trail of diarrhea” was left in the cabin.
One might wonder if once the tourists landed, their behavior improved. Not so. The general vertigo continued: an English tourist was caught engraving his name on a wall of the Colosseum in Rome, arguing that he was unaware of his historical status.
The video and subsequent outrage led to an apology, but this was clearly no deterrent, as a few weeks later a Swiss teenager did the same. Italy seemed to suffer more than most: a tourist damaged a 16th-century statue of Neptune in Florence. A group of German travelers toppled a €200,000 (£170,000) sculpture while apparently posing for photographs. Apparently, the statues were a guarantee for tourists that they would have a good time at all costs.
All of this was well documented thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones. And it has resulted in some destinations actively discouraging tourists from visiting them. Local outrage has transformed into grassroots campaigns. In the Faroe Islands, farmers have begun charging “visit fees” to foreigners on their land. But even official tourism boards have had enough: A missive from the Japanese Tourism Ministry reported on post-pandemic overcrowding even though, less than a year earlier, they implored international visitors to return.
Dr Lauren Seigel, a researcher at the University of Greenwich specializing in tourism behaviour, believes our etiquette abroad has rapidly degraded. “This summer really hit a fever pitch,” she says. In some circumstances, such as stag parties, fuss has always been an element, especially in hedonistic destinations like Prague and Amsterdam. “But now it’s exponentially worse.”
While post-Covid hysteria has led to a sense of all-or-nothing travel, Dr. Seigel doesn’t believe it’s the main reason we’ve seen such bad behavior. “There is much more. “Social networks and globalization are the real causes.”
He points out that people are traveling further than ever. “The cultures are quite different from what we are used to at home. And I think people are doing a lot less research into traveling – they’re relying on their phones and the convenience that that gives them. “They don’t need to research things ahead of time in the same way.”
Still, one would like to hope that people would not, for example, deface the temple walls in their homes or spend a drunken night at their country’s most famous monument. Statistics confirm that people feel liberated during their trips and therefore indulge in things they would not do in “ordinary” life. That used to mean eating an extra helping of dessert or taking a longer shower. Now, however, it seems to also extend to a lack of etiquette.
“You don’t really have a connection to the local culture or people,” he says. “So your actions apparently have no consequences: you are in a vacation land, where you can be whoever you want. “Now it appears to be impacting behavior and is simply a natural iteration of this impulse.”
This seems to coincide with other moments of irregularity that we witnessed this year. There was a brief, bizarre craze of fans throwing objects at singers during concerts, which reached its zenith when pop star Pink was handed a bag of ashes at a show in London. And then there was the seemingly endless scourge of people listening to music on their phones on public transport, with no headphones in sight. Could this be explained as a post-pandemic release?
Studies show that incivility has increased in recent years, but they also show that travelers book trips based on experiences, rather than the destination. That means an Instagram-worthy night out is more important than, say, a lazy afternoon on the beach. It’s not new, but the prospect of virality means that travelers are doing everything they can to “prove” that they are having a good time.
There is a sense that this is self-perpetuating. It could be the case that we are seeing this behavior more frequently as distribution capacity increases. While this year was particularly bad, chaos is not entirely new. In 2022, a Saudi engineer was charged after driving his Maserati through the Spanish Steps in Rome. Three years earlier, there was a stir when a group of Australians ran naked down a street in Bali. All this seems to prove is that the pandemic stopped our slide into incivility, rather than creating it.
Destinations, naturally, have to respond. Photography has been banned in Kyoto’s geisha district because, as Dr. Seigel says, “properties were being destroyed while people were simply chasing geishas to take photos with them.” A fine of ¥10,000 (£55) is now imposed on anyone who takes photographs without permission.
“This kind of thing is a start,” says Dr. Seigel. “It may be the case that you need to get worse before you can get better.” Initiatives that encourage people to behave respectfully: posters on temple walls; Stricter booking criteria: Hopefully these will encourage people to reflect on their behaviour. For historic sites and natural landscapes, it seems a logical, if childish, way to encourage respect. However, it remains to be seen how airlines prevent all bodily fluids.
