We have been fortunate on every holiday we have been on and have not really suffered too much through the antics of unruly holiday makers. I suppose the nearest we got was last year on a big family holiday in Gran Can when a foreign couple got very amourous with each other in the kiddies swimming pool to a point where she went underwater and removed his trunks so matters could go a little further. While most people were complaining and trying to remove their kids from the area, my brother in law cooled the couple down somewhat by power bombing into the pool straight over the top of them. The guy was most unhappy and said that it was against pool rules to power bomb people..Steve promptly reminded him of his behaviour and they guy said there were no rules against it! Steve said it was against the rules of common decency to behave like that in a packed area full of young kids..guy replaced his trunks and him and girlfriend skulked off to not be seen again and Steve became a celebrity to the other parents around the pool!

We stayed in the Azul Playa in Cala Dor, Majorca.

We had a lovely apartment which opened onto a garden on the ground floor, there were only three others, so we shared a garden.

Two days before we left a "new" family moved in. They obviously had relatives in the other apartments on the upper floors who would visit them to use the garden............at times there were a dozen of them shouting and yelling, and it was only a small space meant for four apartments only. The "grannie" would be standing in our apartments bit of garden in her rollers shouting at the top of her voice into a mobile "this place just like off the telly......................."

In the mornings they would pass our apartment door at 7.30am shouting loudly to each other, their voices echoing up and down the corridor............their children squealing and yelling at the tops of their voices and bouncing balls off the wall.............no thought that people might still be sleeping.

I was so glad that we were moving on to another resort two days later......if we had stayed there we would have ended up decking them!

Hi,
We have been lucky enough to get away to Spain twice this year, Moraira, and Barcelona, both times flying with Easy jet and Fly Globespan.
Without trying to sound snobby or superior, I'll put this theory forward. With the advent of low cost carriers to all sorts of destinations in Europe, more and more people are flying on short breaks who wouldn't have done so several years ago because it was probably outwith their reach financially.
For some reason having a good drink before getting on the plane seems to be the norm for these people as well, so the rest of us have to put up with their loud, and normally rude, aggressive behaviour.
Standing at the baggage reclaim in Barcelona there were four couples opposite us who had been on our flight, and who had obviously had a good drink, as they were loud, and their language was a bit choice as well. You could see people staring at them, and I said to my wife, I hope to God the Spanish don't think all Scots are like that lot.
I think it's about time for the Airport Police to weed out these "travellers" before they get anywhere near their flight, and to save Europe being subjected from these "Britons on Tour"

Sorry but you really do sound snobby. When I was a child there was no way my parents could afford to go abroad on holiday, so it wasn't till I was an adult that I was able to afford to travel. But lack of money didn't mean lack of manners. I have travelled all over the world for over forty years now, long before the advent of low cost travel and met people from all sorts of financial backgrounds, some get drunk, are loud and obnoxious and have often paid thousands of pounds for their holidays but most are well behaved, I have seen bad behaviour in lots of places from lots of different nationalities.
I'm quite sure there are lots of members of HT who previously couldn't afford to holiday abroad and low cost airlines have opened up travel at affordable prices but this doesn't mean they will behave badly.
Overall generalisations are never a good idea.

I'm afraid that in my experience the cost of a holiday bears little relation to the manners or behaviour of fellow guests. I've now made it a habit to avoid large hotels or resorts aimed at the British family market during the high season precisely because the risks of encountering the sort of incidents people have described above seem to have increased so much. Even staying in a 5* hotel doesn't seem to reduce the likelihood of encountering the 'family from hell'.

In fact some of the worst incidents happened in places you'd least expect them. Such as the 5* in Miramar in Havana with the man who was berating the waiter because they had no British bitter on draught only the local beers and some 'foreign p***' as he called the imported premium German lagers. Thank heavens we were only staying the one night before flying home the next day. Or the family in Tunisia in the out of season 4* who couldn't get their head around the idea that Tunisians are used to feeding their children exactly the same food as the adults eat and just didn't 'get' the concept of a 'kids menu'. They spent every mealtime loudly complaining that there was 'no food for the kids' despite the groaning buffet.

That was also the holiday that despite me trying to persuade him not to, my Dad insisited on going on the 'Tunisian Night' because he thought he'd be treated to an authentic folkloric performance instead of a drinking competition orchestrated by the reps! He just sat there and kept repeating 'But this is a moslem country!' and shaking his head in bewilderment! The final straw was being cooped up in a coach for nearly 90 minutes with raucous drunken fellow guests who were being encouraged by one of the reps to play a very racist version of 'I Spy' that had people actually banging on the windows and making fun of local people as we passed back through the streets to our hotel - the last drop off as it turned out. (Though this wasn't actually as bad as some of the deeply offensive racist remarks made by some of the other British guests in the hotel I stayed at in The Gambia.) In other words I think that sometimes the TOs actually do very little to try and control some of their unruly guests or even go as far as to create the conditions that seem to encourage it.

So that was actually our last hotel based TO package holiday. These days we tend to head off to places that we think will be unpopular with UK visitors, go DIY in small resorts/SC catering complexes that don't feature in the British TOs brochures, avoid AI like the plague and in general steer clear of those destinations which market themselves to British visitors looking for 'Blackpool in the sun' because we go on holiday to experience different cultures etc and don't want somewhere 'just like home'. It's very sad because I know that it's only a small minority who do behave this way but the few can and do spoil it for the majority. I go away on holiday to find respite from stress and my parents are now of an age when they want to be able to sleep at night and you just can't guarantee that any more at any hotel or complex which attracts UK mass-market visitors.

I don't know whether that is snobby or not but I do know that in our experience, resorts which attract mainly other European nationals such as the Germans, French and Scandinavians are more likely to be to our liking and seem less prone to anti-social, unruly behaviour on the part of visitors.

SM

While i agree with much of what you have written SMa.. in our experience, there are unruly people of all nationalities to be found. Granted, perhaps they are not into this lager lout culture that seems to follow the Brits everywhere we go, but on my 3 most recent holidays the most unruly people were Swedish, German and Russian. This does not necessarily mean I am painting all people of those nationalities as unruly in the same way that not all Brits are unruly.

We too prefer to holiday where there is a mix of all nationalities and cultures.

Whilst in Fuerteventura with my sister-in-law we were walking back to our apartment, it was 9.40pm and dark. There was a group of 4 adults and 2 children speaking to 2 very elderly ladies who were looking at a map of the complex they all had suitcases so I asked if they needed help. The elderly ladies said they couldnt find their apartment I took the map to see if I could help. The rest of the people surrounding them went on their way. I spent the next hour traipsing around the complex with both suitcases and ladies in tow finding the room getting them in and putting up the patio furniture for them. When I had finished I commenteted that as they where alone if they needed any help to give me a knock, they then anounced that the group I had seen them with where their sons and daughter-in-laws! I was gobsmacked that their family had just abandond them in the dark in a strange place. On my way back I saw the family heading to the bar and they didnt even ask if their mums had settled in! I found out the next day that these women were 84 and 86. Is it just me or is that totaly unaceptable?

Sally

Without trying to start world war 111
I do wish people would stop pulling the British down.
I'm in a nice posh 4 * hotel and there are no children here at the moment, it is a hotel suited more to mature clientele of all nationalities, but the ones with the biggest gobs that are a bloody pain in the neck are the ones from Belgium and Holland...they can't speak without shouting at each other, they must all be tone deaf and after a few drinks, I wish they would shut the up and give it a rest.

Is it just me or is that totaly unaceptable?

Totally unacceptable Sally, but remember God pays his debts in different ways and what goes around, comes around

Manners maketh the man

Sanjiiiiiiiiiiiiii

SORRY SANJI CAN YOU REPEAT THAT PLEASE.

^^^^^^^^^
(That is shouting)

..... is Dutch .....

Mark

Mark
how often do I remind you- don't shout.

Sorry- you can't take him anywhere

SORRY SANJI CAN YOU REPEAT THAT PLEASE.

SORRY NO CAN DO.
That's shouting from Spain
Sanjiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Also dont want to start World War III But I agree with you Sanji, completely fed up with people running down the British.

Everytime something negative happens abroad we are told Oh yeah but it's worse at home.

I went to one of the so called dreaded Brit hotels in Turkey last year (didn't even know it was mainly Brits when I booked) called the Belcekic Beach in Turkey, considering it was packed due to being July I would have said the behaviour was more or less exemplary. In two weeks at an AI I saw no drunken behaviour and at the buffet people were handing serving spoons to each other and all taking turns. (How British LOL)

We normally seem to end up in a more multicultural environment, but it was no problem to be with other Brits.

Compared to the greed and behaviour of the Russians and Poles in Egypt, shoving little kids out of the way to take 10 eggs for breakfast and their behaviour towards the Egyptians well.

Yours ( fully expecting to be deleted, even though folk who run down Brits never are)
Doe

Luckily we've never had an real problems on holiday but that said we never go anywhere with English/Irish bars, British pub food etc. as it's just not our cup of tea. We prefer the route less travelled - quieter places, where you can have a nice chat (or sign language!) with the locals and where it isn't over-run with lager louts.
I do get sick of all us Brits being tarrred with the same brush though - you get one group behaving badly and suddenly it's in the Daily Mail and we are all a bunch a fighting drunks!

Sanji brace yourself hon

I agree with you!!!

Whilst I have met some horrendous people on holiday who were British, two years ago in Can Pastilla (which attracts very few Brits, mostly Dutch German Swedish etc)...............it was quite intimidating at times, large groups of lads (not British!!) dressed in some sort of team colours shouting and chanting and getting very drunk in some of the bars between Can Pastilla and Arenal......ok yes they were on holiday but Im talking about lunchtime when kids and families were around.

Families were really intimidated by them as they would wonder the streets in groups of 50 at times!!

By all means tell stories of holiday horrors but I definately dont think its "just" the British!

I can't resist adding my five pennyworth here. I live in a fairly large hotel in Tunisia for the 6 winter months every year and the staff are very open with me and consider I am their English mum. The consistent comments re. holiday makers are;-
Without any doubt, the best guests are the English, because they are polite, friendly, keep their rooms clean, rarely complain, don't make unreasonable demands and tip well.
Without any doubt, the worst are the rich Tunisians for being the total opposite of all the above.
As I had occasionally seen unacceptable behaviour from English guests, I once questioned this and was instantly shot down in flames. I felt quite proud of ourselves - reflected glory and all that! Jenny x

Like it Jennyfrank!

Without any doubt, the best guests are the English

But what about the rest of us British, Scottish Welsh and N. Irish?

Hi,
I've been reading the recently added posts with interest, but I don't think the forum is about Brit bashing in general, foreign holidaymakers are just as capable of being obnoxious as some of our prize specimens are, I think it's about the lowering of acceptable behaviour, and manners in todays society in the main.
I'm sure every HT member has a horror story of unacceptable behaviour by whatever nationality while on holiday, but as the big resorts have lots of bars catering for different nationalities, people of those nationalities tend to gather there, so from the British point of view we home in on the poor, cheap drink fuelled behaviour of our own nationals, and not from the others.
The poor behaviour we see abroad is just a mirror image of the poor behaviour we witness here in the UK everyday.

I agree Polisan it is about lowering the standards of acceptable behaviour, and good manners .
And before you all ask Yes I am a grumpy old woman

It is easy to run down 'Brits abroad' and there are a certain 'type' that none of us wishes to have in the same accomodation. I know I'm guilty of looking around the transfer coach and crossing my fingers that certain people get off before us. But in reality I'm sure they are in the minority in the bulk of resorts.

The worst we have encountered were the Americans when in Mexico, the way some of them talked to the staff was absolutely unbelievable. They showed no respect what so ever. However we did also meet some very nice Americans. Every nationality will have it's undesirable element whether it be for their attitude, their liking for drink or whatever.

Pam