Pushy French travellers made amends on elegance

Penny-pinching, rude and terrible at foreign languages: French people are the world's worst tourists according to a study of the global hotel industry released on Thursday. Carried out last month by TNS Infratest, the study asked 40,000 hotels worldwide to rank tourists from countries based on nine criteria, from their politeness to their willingness to tip. Clean and tidy, polite, quiet and uncomplaining, Japanese tourists came top of the crop for the third year running. Advertisement: Story continues below At the other end of the spectrum, French holidaymakers and business travellers were the least generous or ready to tip, and ranked next-to-last for their overall behaviour and politeness. Pushy French travellers made amends on elegance - classed third - as well as for their discretion and cleanliness. But the French were the least ready to try a new language, unlike US tourists who were most likely to swallow their pride and order a pizza, baguette or a paella in the local lingo. US tourists also got top marks for generosity - as the biggest spenders and tippers - but fell short on other counts as the least tidy, the loudest, the worst complainers, and the most badly dressed. Despite cliches about beer-guzzling hordes descending on Mediterranean resorts each summer, Britons came a surprise second for their overall behaviour, politeness, quietness and even elegance - second for dress sense only Rosetta Stone Italian to the Italians. But the model Japanese were followed by Canadians as the least likely to whinge when a trip goes wrong. France's rivals for the "worst tourist" tag, Spaniards and Greeks came near the bottom of the pack in almost every category. Armoured personnel carriers and dozens ofspecialist police officers rammed the hotel's lavish front entranceand arrested the ringleaders. But the defining image - one thatwould amuse Carlos, I suspect - was a press photograph of thePeninsula's catering staff, immaculate in their white uniforms,taking happy snaps of their heavily armed uninvited guests. For many people Manila is, love it or loathe it, nothing morethan the gateway to the archipelago's 7000 islands. Many touristshead for Boracay, a hot spot for serious hedonists described by myguidebook as "delicately poised between paradise and pandemonium".If you're looking for something rather more relaxing, the island ofBohol - the 10th largest in the archipelago - may be theanswer. It takes about an hour to fly to Bohol from Manila, a trip thatclimaxes with a rather abrupt landing on a short runway. But it'shard to dislike this modest strip of tarmac because it's keeping afirm cap on the number of visitors. Just over 400,000 came lastyear, but an international airport with direct flights from Chinaand South Korea is on the drawing board, and luxury hotels andresorts are springing up, particularly on Panglao, the small islandattached to Bohol's south-western tip by a narrow causeway.

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