Tourist Stereotypes And The Dangers

The fat Southern American couple that can't pronounce the names of the sights. The Japanese tourist group avidly taking photos of everything. The hippy travelling students that leave mess and noise in their wake. Tourist stereotypes are extremely common, often being endorsed in films and advertisements. But there is a darker side to these stereotypes that many of us don't realise.

Let's take a closer look at the American tourist stereotype, for example. From having a look on Google, it seems the common stereotype is for American tourists to be loud, obnoxious, ignorant, unappreciative and with a sense of superiority. Oh, and of course they are all overweight. There are web pages dedicated to helping American's keep themselves from appearing like tourists with advice like "be quiet!" "don't compare everything to the USA" and "Leave your baseball hats, backpack, fanny pack and water bottles at home".

This is the problem with stereotypes; they all tend to be negative. As stereotypes often become our common associations to a particular group, we therefore develop negative thoughts about the group as a whole. When looking at stereotypes as a whole, this is one of the biggest arguments I can think of against them but in particular to tourists, when the locals have these associations, one emotion tends to crop up wherever the tourists do: irritation. We become irritated that these people are in our country, often their pure appearance or the fact that they are clearly foreign is enough to piss us off. This in turn leads to tourists thinking that the population of that country are rude and horrible, leading to a stereotype of that population and the vicious cycle continues.

The example that springs to mind here is France and the English. I have heard many English people complain that the French are extremely rude to English people who visit France. On the other side however, the French find it extremely rude the way the English behave while in France, with stereotypes of treating the French who can't speak English as if they are stupid with big hand gestures and speaking very slowly still in English (as if that will somehow help the French understand). Ultimately the whole problem stems from a misunderstanding of each other that has been exaggerated and cemented through a stereotype.

In future, even if a tourist does appear to fit a stereotype, don't let this cycle continue. Walk up to that overweight American in the brightly coloured shirt and just let them know that in your country the handshake is not used or most people don't speak English or the name of that tourist attraction is pronounced this way not that. By politely educating each other and generally just being kind to one another perhaps we can exchange these negative stereotypes for positive ones. Its worth a shot, right?