A gondola crashed in Venice. Bodily fluids on budget flights. Heritage sites destroyed. Completely freed from pandemic restrictions, the world traveled en masse this year, and did so with gusto. Most destinations reported visitor numbers at the same level as in 2019; the Middle East exceeded pre-pandemic figures by 20 percent. And yet this excitement about travel was not met with the reverence one might expect.
In fact, manners were conspicuously absent. Videos taken by airline passengers showed bad behavior that went far beyond the usual complaints: Extremely reclining the seats was a relatively minor violation. Getting worse.
There was the raunchy – like the pair caught in mid-air by easyJet staff on a flight (they were greeted with laughter upon landing by fellow passengers and a police escort). There was the dangerous part: on a Ryanair flight bound for Manchester, a man was arrested for smoking a cigarette in the toilet.
Then there was the disgusting thing. We were told – if you’re eating, skip to the next paragraph – that fecal matter was found on the toilet floor on another easyJet flight, resulting in its cancellation. Passengers on a Delta flight faced something even more terrible as their plane had to land early after a “messy trail of diarrhea” was left throughout the cabin.
One might wonder if their behavior improved once the tourists landed. Not so. The general giddiness continued: an English tourist was caught carving his name into a wall of the Colosseum in Rome, claiming he was unaware of its historical status.
The video and subsequent outrage led to an apology, but this was clearly not a deterrent as just weeks later a Swiss teenager did the same. Italy seemed to suffer more than most other countries: a 16th-century statue of Neptune was damaged by a tourist in Florence. A group of German travelers knocked over a €200,000 sculpture while apparently posing for photos. Apparently images were collateral for the holidaymaker who wanted to have a good time at any price.
All of this was well documented, thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones. And it has led to some destinations actively discouraging tourists from visiting. Local outrage has turned into grassroots campaigns. In the Faroe Islands, farmers have started charging visiting fees to non-locals on their land. But even official tourism boards have had enough: A notice from Japan’s Ministry of Tourism reported post-pandemic crowds, despite having urged international visitors to return less than a year earlier.
Dr. Lauren Seigel, a researcher at the University of Greenwich who specializes in tourist behavior, thinks our overseas etiquette has rapidly deteriorated. “This summer it really reached a fever pitch,” she says. In some circumstances, such as stag and hen parties, rowdiness has always been an element – especially in hedonistic destinations such as Prague and Amsterdam. “But now it’s exponentially worse.”
Although post-Covid hysteria has led to a sense of all-or-nothing travel, Dr. Seigel doesn’t think this is the main reason we’ve seen such bad behavior. “There is a lot more to it. Social media and globalization are the real causes.”
She points to the fact that people are traveling further than ever. “Cultures are very different from what they are used to at home. And I think people are doing a lot less research for their trips – they rely on their phone and the convenience that brings. They don’t have to look things up in advance in the same way.”
Still, you would like people not to deface temple walls at home, for example, or to spend a drunken night at their country’s most famous landmark. Statistics show that people feel liberated during their travels and therefore indulge in ways that they might not do in ‘normal’ life. In the past, that meant eating an extra piece of dessert or taking a longer shower. But now it seems to extend to a lack of etiquette.
“You don’t really have a connection with the local culture or the local people,” she says. “So your actions apparently have no consequences – you’re in holidayland, where you can be whoever you want. Now it seems to influence behavior, and it’s just a natural recurrence of this urge.”
This seems to tie into other moments of inappropriateness we’ve witnessed this year. There was the brief, strange craze of fans throwing objects at singers during concert performances, which reached its peak when pop star Pink was handed a tote bag of ashes during a show in London. And then there was the seemingly endless plague of people playing music on their phones on public transport – without headphones nearby. Can this be explained as a post-pandemic liberation?
Research shows that incivility has increased in recent years – but they also show that travelers are booking trips based on experiences, rather than their destination. This means that an Instagram-worthy night out is more important than, for example, a quiet afternoon on the beach. It’s not new, but the prospect of virality means travelers are going to great lengths to ‘prove’ they’re having a good time.
There is a sense that this is self-perpetuating. We may see this behavior more often as distribution power increases. While this year has felt particularly bad, the chaos isn’t entirely new. In 2022, a Saudi engineer was charged after driving his Maserati down the Spanish Steps in Rome. Three years earlier there was an uproar when a group of Australians ran naked through a street in Bali. All this seems to show that the pandemic has halted, rather than caused, our slide into incivility.
Destinations must of course respond. Photography is banned in Kyoto’s geisha district because, as Dr. Seigel says, “property was destroyed because people just chased geisha to take pictures with them.” There is now a ¥10,000 (£55) fine for anyone taking photos without a permit.
“These kinds of things are a start,” says Dr. Seigel. “It may be the case that things have to get worse before they can get better.” Initiatives that encourage people to behave respectfully – posters on the walls of temples; stricter booking criteria – will hopefully encourage people to think about their behaviour. For historic sites and natural landscapes, it seems a logical, if infantilizing, way to encourage respect. However, how airlines keep all the bodily fluids at bay remains to be seen.