Episode 27
Tourists Behaving Badly: How to Not Be a Part of the Problem
It seems like we're hearing more and more stories about plane fights, graffiti at major historical sites, and general entitlement. On this episode of the Time To Talk Travel podcast, hosts Ciaran Blumenfeld, Desiree Miller, Maureen Dennis and Nasreen Stump dive into tourists behaving badly- why do they do it, how can we stop it and what caused it.
From airplane fistfights to companies scamming travelers for extra fees to people carving their names into the Coliseum and even people conducting screaming photo shoots at La Sagrada Familia we cover it.
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Transcript
Tourists Behaving Badly Podcast
[:[00:00:16] Nasreen: Welcome to another episode of Time to Talk Travel. We love to think that everybody traveling is doing it for the adventure and the immersion and just being able to see new places and that they are as lovely and respectful as we like to think we are when we travel. But the reality of it is that there have been a lot of stories of tourists behaving badly, whether it is people acting up or acting out or just destroying things. It has come to a point now where some destinations are even saying, you thought you were going to travel here. Don't. Today we are going to dive into these tourists behaving badly. Our own experiences Ciaran, I know that you have a good one for this,
[:stone penis Somewhere in the pantheon decades ago, but it just it's so disrespectful And there are actually teams of experts who are on hand and specialized equipment, like lasers, to remove it because it's enough of a problem that it happens so frequently.
So it was cool to watch them doing it, but also, horrifying
to me to think that somebody is that, narcissistic to destroy something that is thousands and thousands of years old. And, for all of us to enjoy and see, and I'm just going to spray paint a penis on it.
[:Do you not get the symbolism of how old this is and what it stood through? , I think the same thing when I go to places around, America, where it's not nearly as old, but for whatever reason you think it's important to leave your initials, painted on a rock or just what, I don't know.
[:[00:03:15] Maureen: the people in National Park, it's,
Do they just not know? Or do just not I I think they're arrogant.
[:know where I live. It's a huge problem and like desiree said we have a problem In all of the clubhouses and the common areas. I live in a fairly affluent community with lovely Amenities for everybody and my hoa fees keep going up.
I sound like i'm like an old lady get off my lawn But no the vandalism and the destruction have been Horrible just heartbreaking. They've had to close a lot of the facilities and it's not people from somewhere else angry at the affluence coming in and destroying it to make a political statement.
It's the very wealthy, entitled, spoiled kids who are destroying everything. There's no accountability because the parents are all lawyers and Better not photograph my kid shooting BB guns at all the mirrors in the bathrooms in the clubhouses because I will sue you,
[:insanity.
[:They will remove you from the temple. It doesn't matter. people think the rules do not apply to them. They will still do exactly what they've been told not to do. Even, taking pictures or getting too close to wildlife in the national parks to the point of endangering yourself and others and thinking like, Oh sure they run at some people, but it won't happen to me. you are not immune.
[:special.
you think it's an American problem? I don't think it actually is an exclusively
American problem. Because I've seen people from all over the world behaving quite
[:[00:05:32] Maureen: We're breaking up.
[:However, the same method was used by Amsterdam for advertising in England because British men were coming and having their stag parties there and going on pub crawls and just creating a lot of chaos. They did this targeted campaign where they're like, Don't come here to pub crawl. It's not going to be good.
We don't like it. Don't do it. It definitely isn't a uniquely American problem when there are ad campaigns and other countries doing the same thing.
[:I was there for New Year's a couple years ago. You need to have your wits about you. Once you have a crazy amount of drunken, people come in, especially young people it was, Extremely dangerous. And they had shootings and that's not what they want.
And they're willing to say, you know what? We don't want you, please don't come. We're going to make it a nightmare for you. There's going to be police. There's going to be tickets. There's going to be underage drinking tickets. There's going to be curfews. There's going to be all these things. So it didn't just say, please don't come.
They're like, please don't come. Cause we're going to make it miserable for you.
[:[00:06:49] Maureen: We're good.
[:Since then a lot of it's criminal, people renting out entire houses to do, Airbnb and doing parties and it turns into a shooting.
And typically it's not even college kids. It's not. Other people come here to party with college kids and it turns bad. And that's what happened in Miami.
[:And to remember that. People live there. What Miami is doing is attempting to not have it get completely out of control and a hot mess for the people who live there and the families who want to come visit and want to know that it's not going to be just chaos. It does go back to that.
Remember, behaving badly isn't just defacing things or wandering around a town drunk. It might be. Going and stopping traffic in the middle of a road or being reckless so that you can get a photo. I forgot this the last time we did this episode, but when I lived in Texas, I was on the blue bonnet route and we had a guy in a red Corvette sports car.
He stopped his car on the middle of the rural highway that I lived on and got out with his car parked and started taking a picture. This is a 65 mile an hour rural highway that is twisting and turning. Had anyone come at that moment, It would have put everyone in extreme danger. And again, the rules apply to you.
I don't care what car you have. I don't care what picture you want to take. You can't stop in the road.
[:went through sheer hell and they're standing there smiling with the beds behind them.
Are you even,
[:[00:09:36] Maureen: There's no respect for history. And I don't know if that's because we've started tearing down statues and we're rewriting history to whatever narrative, whoever wants it to be from whatever perspective you want it to be. The lack of respect is taking a selfie there and smiling and be like, ah, versus saying, documenting it for your own memory and your own respect. The lack of respect is just disgusting. I don't know where or when that started to change, but when we start tearing things down and rewriting history to suit whatever you can't really be surprised if people don't respect it.
[:[00:10:20] Maureen: else does it.
[:[00:10:22] Ciaran: We live in a very instant gratification way of life. And I think that's global. A lot of social media has really changed the way that we live and communicate.
te shoes. They wanted to take:shoots there.
[:We're taking a picture. It's not always about you.
[:You don't, you're not the boss of me. I know, but I'm just being considerate. Just saying, call me Karen if you want.
[:[00:11:44] Ciaran: In a way, my last trip to Europe, I felt like I was photo documenting all of the tourists acting badly. It became a whole theme of my trip and it became very amusing for me. I was in the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. There's an Instagram wife there. She was determined to get the right picture of herself looking very reverent in the middle of the Sagrada Familia.
But she had to clear an area and she had to have her husband lay down on the floor and get the right angle while she posed, looking up, upwards at
[:[00:12:23] Ciaran: The funniest was that she was looking so beautiful and reverent. Then she would look at the photos and she would start screaming at him and berating.
[:[00:12:46] Maureen: People getting bathing suit shots right in front of somebody's table at a restaurant because the view is pretty just, I don't know.
Even at the palace, the changing of the guard I saw a family who came up really close to one of the horses, and the horse nibbled on the child's leg, and they got mad, and I'm like, Get away from the horse who's working!
That is not the horse's fault. That is your fault.
[:[00:13:19] Nasreen: Oh because I always love the bad reviews for the places that everyone goes to. It speaks to the level of entitlement sometimes. I had copied over a couple of the reviews, particularly National Park ones always make me giggle. There was a one star review for Arches National Park.
More arches, please. Honestly, I thought there'd be more arches. Arches as far as the eye can see. It's called Arches National Park. Are there formations as far as the eye can see? Sure, but then call it Formations National Park. Or a few arches scattered over thousands of acres National Park.
Don't come expecting every arch to look like the one on the license plate, because it's one of the few that's impressive. This place gets one star because the name is seriously misleading. Oh, I
[:make that person happy in life.
[:There are no animals, no greenery, no clear blue streams, just a muddy river, rock, and sheer cliffs. You'll go ooh and ah for 30 seconds and then feel guilty that you're ready to leave after that. I've been to Yellowstone twice with buffalo herds walking near my car, an entire elk herd passing me when I went hiking, bald eagles so big I thought it was Jurassic Park, bears twice, and even a wolf trying to steal a baby buffalo in the standoff among a herd. At the Grand Canyon a hole. A very large hole. But it's okay, because people also complained about Yellowstone, so it's not, everybody's different, whatever.
[:[00:14:50] Desiree: That's like going to Hawaii and then complaining it's wet.
[:[00:14:54] Desiree: Yes,
[:[00:14:56] Maureen: There's too much sand at the beach.
I love that one.
[:[00:15:06] Maureen: Some people are not meant to travel. That's what it means. Stay home. Behave yourself..
[:And they're like, this is not new. This is something that's been part of, time forever. They were going about travelers and people on planes and what have you. And I disagree. I think it really increased with Covid. I think that was like an overnight. Once people got back on planes and they had to wear masks and they didn't want to.,
All of the sudden we're punching flight attendants and they're just doing their job.
They may not even agree.
[:[00:15:39] Desiree: But not slapping and punching the flight attendants. Maybe we just hear about it more because
[:didn't travel for anywhere from one to four years.
[:Weird. And it has I think it's escalated. I know we're hearing about it more and I know it's getting reported on more. So there's an awareness of the situation, but we traveled a lot and we didn't have these types of stories as business travelers that we do now where people are like, Oh my goodness, I can't believe this happened.
We diverted, someone tried to open the plane door. We had to tackle someone. The stories now are just getting more and more aggressive, would be the case because there were always weirdos flying. There were always people doing strange things, people bringing things on they shouldn't have.
I can't tell you how many random animals I've seen get taken away from people when they put them places you're not supposed to.
[:[00:17:04] Desiree: Everyone wants to go viral and
[:[00:17:07] Desiree: yeah, we may be part of the problem
[:We started the blogging. We started the travel blogging. We are the OG problem,
but we are respectful and polite
[:[00:17:32] Maureen: Video your whole
[:[00:17:55] Desiree: Your legacy should not be that you carved your name into the Coliseum.
[:It's, you, the people who handcuff themselves and throw soup and paint and whatnot.
[:[00:18:29] Maureen: The security never thought would happen because we've had a level of respect and reverence for history and art and, no matter what those people did in their own time. Now we're judging that way and be able to go and to disrespect different cultures just because they don't believe the same thing as you doesn't mean you have any right especially on their own home turf to Be disrespectful.
[:[00:19:18] Maureen: Learn from history. respectful.
[:[00:19:37] Nasreen: We were talking before about seeing more incidences with the airlines. Social media has brought to light things that we may not have known about before. there's a passenger shaming Instagram. There are flight attendants who document things on TikTok.
There is more visibility into what has actually been going on. And they'll even talk sometimes and say we always had drunk passengers. This has not changed at all, but we never had this happening regularly. And now it is. So if you want a good chuckle, passenger shaming on Instagram, just Pretty hilarious, because I think we've all, and we talked about this before on another episode, of things people do on planes that they shouldn't do on planes.
I've had people cut their toenails on a plane. That's disgusting. No one should do that. But also I'd rather have someone doing that than someone punching the flight attendant. Maureen's no.
[:One my friends is a flight attendant and she just posted like, Hey, PSA, the toilet's flush on the plane.
yes,
she's what the hell, people? Can they not? There's no handle. I get it. It's a button, but it's not rocket science.
[:[00:20:45] Maureen: God, you know they're not washing their hands.
[:[00:20:48] Maureen: But we still travel. We carry on.
[:incentivized people to behave badly. In some ways you can make a lot of money. Again, we did it for a while writing about, what we saw on our travels. I'm writing a book now about tales from the terminal, which is, airport and airplane stories where it is not at all a book about shaming people. There are definitely shameful things written.
[:It's not comfort. You might as well be on the city bus. You just need to get there and just keep your cool. And with everything that everybody has going on in life, somebody's going to lose it.
It's inevitable. Every one of the flights I've been on lately has been jam packed. So you're crammed in, you're with smelly, rude people, and at some point somebody's gonna break.
[:It's in there all the way and they're still saying you need to pay for this. We have to check it. It doesn't fit in the carry on bag bin and they are showing a video. There's people arguing. They're taking them off the flights. We find out later that they're incentivized, that they get to keep the money from the luggage. This is how the airline is bonusing them.
That just sets up this type of behavior. If you have that kind of tension and the rules are in place, but they're crap rules. They're designed to make more money for the airline or to punish us, then it's harder to get people to follow the rules that are there for your safety or that are valid and they do it to themselves sometimes.
[:[00:22:41] Maureen: Already riled up before they're even on the plane.
[:the,
[:of those things where, you know we do our best with our own behavior. We talk about it here, so hopefully
a few people go yeah, maybe I'll be a little more respectful next time.
Not everybody has traveled the world like we have and have had the experiences we have.
And I think that gives us a lot of insight and knowledge and privilege into understanding different places, different people, different things.
[:[00:23:19] Nasreen: I like the positive
[:[00:23:21] Maureen: I have
That I've met on a plane.
I was with them for maybe an hour or four hours. And ten years later, I still see their stuff. We're still social media friends.
[:[00:23:33] Maureen: There is a lot of good that comes out of it. And, we can't let a few rotten apples ruin the batch.
Or the
the what? The bunch?
The basket? know. What are apples in?
[:[00:23:49] Nasreen: Film it.
[:[00:23:51] Maureen: But
with that. with that too just don't know. Somebody who's that disrespectful sees you filming or sees you reporting.
especially if you're holding a knife.
do it discreetly and do it smartly.
[:people to try and get away with the same. I think that, I believe in the carrot and not the stick, so
I think that being inspirational and giving people attention for behaving well.
This is like my psychology. , I almost became a teacher, pardon me.
I think, encouraging people to act better and making that be a focus is a far more positive and more likely way to create change.
[:So it was like 3 a night or something.
I messaged before and I said, Hey, it's our anniversary. I know I'm a non rev essentially, like you're not going to make any revenue off of me, but if there's any opportunity for an upgrade, we're on our anniversary, I would love it.
If possible, if not, I completely understand. They shot us up to one of the top floors. We got an upgrade. It was no problem. I'm a diamond member, but I didn't expect it. And so I think that when you ask for things nicely and you just say, Hey, we would totally love it.
This is a special occasion for us. This is what the deal is. Completely understand if you can't do it because I think there is such a, the idea that people are going to be upset with you or scream at you no matter what. And so to just set it up with, Hey, would love this. Understand if it can't happen, we appreciate you.
[:will fix whatever it is and then you might not even
[:[00:26:12] Nasreen: 100%. We lost poor Des. She dropped off cause the Wi Fi died and, apparently she didn't yell at it enough and punch it and tell it to do what she wanted it to.
[:[00:26:23] Nasreen: we are going to wrap up this episode of Tourists behaving badly, things that we never thought we'd see, why it happens, and the psychological reasons behind it.
So any last words about people carving their names into things? No, it's just, don't do it.
[:[00:26:39] Nasreen: a good traveler, respect people, respect yourself, be nice to people.
[:[00:26:47] Nasreen: Oh my goodness. Being remembered for the wrong reasons all around. Okay. Until next time.
Happy travels, safe travels, happy non destructive travels, happy respectful travels, one of those will work, right?
[: