Yahoo News The war on British tourists stinks of class snobbery
Here we go again. The British tourist is once more under attack. In Mallorca, as you may have read, tourism boss Lucia Escribano has said the island “was not interested in having… budget tourists from the UK”. Somebody or other apparently said something similar in Lanzarote.
That was one smack. A second came from within Britain itself.
A surprising number of commenters on Telegraph Travel's article, as elsewhere, pulled in behind Spanish officialdom, expressing profound distaste for British tourists. “Keep yobbish Brits at a distance”, has been the general tone.
It seemed that late-night incidents in Med hotspots had been stretched to stain all British tourists with a mark of shame – all those British tourists except, of course, the people doing the commenting. They extract themselves from the “British tourist” category – perhaps self-identifying as “travellers” – the better to scorn their fellow citizens.
We have, in short, the makings of a cultural civil war. This is not new. We’ve been at it for years, at least since 19th-century clergyman-diarist Francis Kilvert was sounding off. As we’ve noted before, Kilvert, an enthusiastic nudist, didn’t deal in nuance. “Of all noxious animals… the most noxious is a tourist,” he wrote. “And, of all tourists, the most vulgar, ill-bred, offensive and loathsome is the British tourist.”
In Kilvert’s time, you could be snobbish about pretty much anything. It’s harder now. In fact, it may be that execrating tourists is one of the last permitted snobberies, a coded way of distancing oneself from the “uncultured” classes, with their in-town tourist trains, jugs of sangria and restaurants with menus bearing photographs.
On this analysis, tourists are those who arrive in “hordes” or, better yet, “teeming hordes”. They overrun places, ruining them. They may favour pedalos and a full English. They are to be avoided. You know the refrains. You might have used them yourself. “Wonderful spot,” you say. “There were no other Britons there!”. Or “The place was full of Brits – grim indeed!”
This is, for a start, a bit uppity. The words suggest that you, the speaker, are uniquely qualified among our countrymen to appreciate whichever foreign field you happen to be in. It’s also bonkers. You are, I’m surmising, British. Thus your presence in this particular foreign field is ruining it for other Britons like you – who wish to avoid you as you wish to avoid them. So you’ll have to leave smartish so as not to disappoint the next Brits along. Who must then also clear off, etc, etc.
Of course, I understand that it is difficult to warm to British youth shirtless, plastered and puking at 3am on hot summer nights in Magaluf or Faliraki. The thing is, though, that most holidaying Britons – even those on a budget – aren’t in Magaluf or Faliraki at 3am on hot summer nights. Or, indeed, at all. (That said, if when young, you didn’t go on holiday seeking drink and, more forlornly, sex, it’s no wonder we never met.)
The British at play
Elsewhere, many more Britons are civilised and, in general, fine company even – especially – in spots like Mallorca and Benidorm. I’ve been to both a couple of times, and spent instructive evenings in the Calle Girona district, HQ of British nightlife in Benidorm. Granted, it isn’t exactly fishing-village quaint. On my visits, bars were brash with neon, karaoke and a warm-night potential for getting out of hand.
The whole appeared overwhelming – until one got in among it to discover that, well, everyone was there: groups of youngsters, of course, but also middle-aged couples, grandparents, bunches of mature women making as much noise as the kids, all dressed up and beaming.
This was Great Britain at play – raucous, certainly; excessive, occasionally; but deeply good-humoured and decent withal. The fellow who accidentally knocked over my beer instantly bought me another one, twice as big. Conversation was easy.
And so what if you want a roast-beef-and-Yorkshires-lunch in “Sam and Beryl’s Bradford Bar”? Japanese tourists in London frequent Japanese restaurants, as Spaniards seek out Spanish. Rafael Nadal apparently has a favourite Spanish restaurant handy for Wimbledon. We think this acceptable. So why may not British people abroad go for the roast beef?
While there one time, I met a Spanish fellow who had worked in the Benidorm hotel trade for 34 years.
“Benidorm has been my first love,” he told me in English, one of seven languages he spoke. “And my favourite guests are the British. They are easy-going, polite and have a special sort of class which the Spanish appreciate.
“And, remember, the person with a big tummy and many tattoos can still be a gentleman. In my experience, he usually is.”
Now, if this chap liked us, why can’t we like ourselves, all of us?
Of course we do, some of the time. Put lively young men and women in military uniform and send them overseas to fight on our behalf in the Falklands or Iraq – and they are splendid people. The bravest of the brave, to be honoured wherever Britons gather.
But put similar folk on a beach or in a Mediterranean bar with a beer or two and a burger (and, Lord knows, few people deserve sunny holidays more) and suddenly they are beyond the pale.
Really, it’s time we got a grip. The French, among whom I live and with whom I have often holidayed, don’t conduct this sort of national self-loathing. They’re too busy meeting up – in Spain, Italy, Florida, Indonesia – to discuss and judge the other country relative to France.
We should maybe follow suit for the fact is that Britons on holiday (when not spouting rubbish about avoiding other Britons) are usually great – up, down and along the scale.
Warm welcomes
We are, in the main, civilised, appreciative and unpretentious. Boisterous sometimes, but generally pretty good. We are widely recognised as such. Since the Mallorcan lady gave us our marching orders and that person in Lanzarote said something similar, so Turkey, Greece and Portugal have all renewed warm welcomes. And so, against many people’s expectations, have the French. Their tourism development agency said recently that the British market “is always a priority and we must work tirelessly to re-invigorate the flow of tourists towards France.”
Believe me, they like us.
A Normandy hotelier I know even rates us well above his fellow French. “The British spend more freely and seem to think of holidays as fun rather than as study tours,” he said.
Let us now consider this spending. Britons effectively invented tourism, via the Grand Tour and, later, winters spent spraying cash around both the Italian and the French Rivieras. Later still we were early into package tours which, increasingly, made sun and foreign parts available to people on more modest incomes.
Thus a pattern was set, not least in Spain – where we became the top visitors by a country mile. Some 18 million of us were there in 2019 as against 11 million Germans, in second place. Given the impact such figures have on economic development in Mallorca – and in Spain in general – it seems ill-mannered for some of them now to turn round and say:
“We don’t want your budget tourists. Your working classes. You know, the ones who created our prosperity, gave us health insurance and colour TVs instead of single goats, donkeys and wells. Farewell to them. From now on, we only want rich folks.” Of course, they don’t say that, but it’s roughly what they mean.
And, if that seems impolite of certain Spaniards, what are we to say of those Britons who apparently agree… that the popular classes should stay home or, at least, out of the sight of their betters?
This invariably comes wrapped in a high moral tone for which there is little justification. As far as I’m aware, there’s no moral or qualitative hierarchy of holiday pleasures. Flying to Alicante is in no way inferior to flying to Ulaanbaatar. It’s just a different departure gate.
If someone wishes to go galloping across Mongolia, that’s fine, dandy and a matter of personal choice. Just don’t let him or her look down upon alternative holiday options (mine, as it happens) which have, in the past, included brandy-fuelled crazy golf in Benidorm, frolicking with the kids in the waves at La Grande Motte, and launching myself – ourselves – at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. The gallopers will have enjoyed themselves, I too have had a ball, none of us is a better person for it, just happier.
Nor does playing crazy golf or riding The Big One one week mean you cannot visit the Prado or attend a concert of the Hallé orchestra the following one. You can, and this is a scoop, do both, just as you might eat one day at McDonald’s and the next night under Michelin stars.
The move might bite back
Of course, it is entirely up to the Mallorcans, the Lanzaroteños and others how they run their resorts. They want only top-end tourists, that’s their business. But the move might bite back. Already, according to a report in the Daily Mail, the thrust for higher-earning visitors has jacked rents up to the point where some islanders are apparently being forced out of flats into camper vans.
“More and more people are moving into campers,” said Matias Vidal, director of a Mallorca estate agency. “It’s still a minority but an increasing trend that we didn’t see some years ago.”
Other regrets are conceivable. Commerce might suffer. Certainly, some of the establishments I frequented last time in Cala d’Or didn’t seem tailor-made for top-enders. It is also not impossible that public order measures, properly applied, could take the edge of youthful excesses. Already, organised bar crawls in some popular areas were banned last summer; astonishing, really, that it took so long to get round to that kind of proscription.
But that’s for the local authorities over there. My concern is more for the domestic disdain expressed by some of our people for others among us. And I’m wondering whether we really need yet another culture clash.
