Yesterday we took a look at five things that tourists can do in towns full of other tourists to properly wind up the locals. Of course, only looking at the irritating side of things is an extremely lopsided way of looking at things: tourism brings with it money, which in turn can help the economy tick along and keep plenty of people in work. That applies to my current city of Dublin – especially with the economy in the state it’s in now – more than most. So what should locals do to keep the tourists coming? That’s an incredibly complex question. One that’s not so complex is what they shouldn’t do. Here are five of our top ones – please add your own!
- Don’t take into account language differences. A lot of people are a little too quick to say that in a country, you should always speak the local language. Spend a summer in, say, mainland Europe, and you’ll soon realize how unrealistic that kind of requirement might be. Given that speaking two dozen languages is the preserve of linguistic geniuses, then, we should respect the fact that somebody makes any significant effort to speak our own language to us. The best way to respect this is to be understanding and speak in a way that’s appropriate to someone who is making such an effort: unless they’re genuinely impressive, slow down, drop the thesaurus-inspired aspects of your speech and go easy on the local dialect and idioms. Sure, it’s not easy to do, but the very least someone speaking in a second language can hope for, surely, is that when it becomes clear they’re struggling, we all slow down a touch?
- Treat tourists in a markedly different way to locals when it comes to commercial transactions. Sure, there’s an argument that in very poor countries, there should be a kind of ‘tourist tax’ imposed by local businesses. It’s a complex argument to say the least, and one that we’re well aware Travbuddies fall on both sides of the fence on. What’s for certain, though, is that in a lot of countries, tourists mean dollar signs. Which is fine, as long as things don’t become bordering on racist. Multiples of four or five on hotel prices, different amounts quoted on non-native restaurant menus, taxi drivers refusing to use their meters for foreigners and even government sponsored multi-tier pricing systems are just some things we’ve encountered. Create these two tier systems and you’ll irritate plenty of people very quickly. Make the differences significant and you’ll foster some real resentment amongst a significant number of visitors.
- Deliberately mislead. Call us cynics, if you like, but we’ve been on the road a little too long to think that conmen are just following the culture. See the tea room scam in Beijing, or those women who just have to ‘help you feed the birds’ and then charge you a ridiculous fee for it in Bangkok . What’s most frustrating, though, is those things that fall in just enough of a cultural middle ground to be arguable. The extra charges for air conditioning that aren’t mentioned when you check in, ‘free breakfast’ that’s only available until 7.30am or a ‘private guide’ to be shared with every other person in a very large hotel entourage . You can argue, you both know it’s a mild kind of scam, but nobody’s going to be even contemplating refunds. Ouch, one seriously bad taste in the mouth.
- Talk in stereotypes. We’ve all heard them before. Believe me, being British, I’ve heard everything there is to hear about having bad teeth, wearing top hats, the fog in London and knowing the Queen. None of those things apply to me , and it’s been a long, long time since they amused me. The same goes on many, many levels: you’ll endear yourself significantly by communication with someone rather than slapping stereotypes on their nationality, and things are likely to be far friendlier as a result. And for what it’s worth, London’s not all that foggy, really, and there are 60 million people in the UK – if we tell you we’re personal friends with the Queen or Prince William, we’re almost certainly winding you up.
- Excessive Bereaucracy. Australia’s been coming in for plenty of criticism recently for the fact that it’s one of the only developed countries in the world that doesn’t allow Europeans entry on a short term basis without a visa, and for insisting on all travellers leaving a very sizable country and returning if they want to stay more than three months . I’ve recently been informed that Viet Nam’s airport procedure could easily take five hours even if you have all the correct paperwork , and some of the questions involved in entering a Cambodian land border are clearly only intended to annoy you into handing over some excess cash. Here’s a clue for the respective governments: excessive paperwork rarely prevents terrorist entry, and hold ups for frivolous questions that an attacker could answer in their sleep certainly doesn’t. Not having booked a hotel to arrive in doesn’t mean a person is a threat, and at the end of the day, tourists almost invariably bring cash to a country. Why make things so hard?
So what is it that really gets your goat out on the road?
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