It seems as though a lot of people have forgotten how to be tourists. As a travel writer, I can’t quite believe some of the behaviour we’re seeing on display around the world. Summer might be a time to throw away inhibitions, but we don’t need to throw away all of them.
Let’s start with the obvious: leave those poor statues alone. There’s no need to ride them, play with them, touch them up or do unspeakable things with them, like we’ve seen in the past week. I won’t go into details, but suffice to say that if you’re doing things like that in public, your mum will be ashamed. Just don’t do it.
Another thing: don’t go hiking naked. It might be fine in some nudist-friendly places, but it’s certainly not in Namibia, where earlier this year some male tourists horrified local people by posing naked in front of the Big Daddy sand dunes. It’s not just about the nudity – think about all the places you don’t want to get sandy. But really, just say no to public nudity on holiday. Put it away.
No acting like James Bond. That means no driving cars down the Spanish Steps in Rome or across the Charles Bridge in Prague. There is, I’m afraid, one rule for him and another for the rest of us. That’s why he’s James Bond.
This stuff should be obvious but it’s clearly not, so I’ll keep going. No touching wildlife when you are out and about, whether you’re going too close to walruses in Svalbard, where you’ll be fined, or taking a selfie with a sloth in Costa Rica, where authorities are asking tourists to stop getting so close to wildlife.
No carving your name into anything, ancient or modern. Ancient Rome has been a trigger point for a lot of bad behaviour of this type, with a tourist carving a message on the 2,000-year-old Colosseum last year. If you are tempted to write your initials on a wall like a naughty kid on a school trip, don’t. The same goes for leaving a cheap padlock with hastily Sharpied initials on an iconic European bridge.
If you are wondering what you can do on holiday, the good news is that my adopted home town of Copenhagen has launched a pilot scheme called CopenPay to incentivise and reward good tourist behaviour this summer, and it hopes other cities will follow.
There are 26 different activities you can do, from riding a bike to picking up litter or weeding and planting at an urban farm. Rewards include treats such as a free cup of coffee – coffee costs about £5 here – lunch, free entry to attractions, and free art workshops. Oslo has a similar scheme, offering a free sauna or lunch if you help with a harbour clean-up;. And in the Pacific Ocean nation of Palau, this kind of approach has been going for years, so treating the islands well gives you access to natural and cultural wonders.
In Copenhagen, the idea is to get tourists to integrate with the city in a better way, to encourage them on to public transport (you really don’t want to try parking here) and to find ways to spread visitors around the city so they aren’t all clustered in the usual places, leading to overcrowding. Copenhagen doesn’t really suffer from overtourism, but at peak times of the year, the narrow cobbled streets in the very centre can be busy. As a local, I am all too aware of peak season in Copenhagen. It’s the time when I start yelling at tourists who walk in the bike lane or who are trying an e-bike for the first time and weaving all over the road.
Once you have nailed the basics, it doesn’t take a lot to be a good tourist. It is all the usual stuff you do every day at home: don’t litter; stand up on the bus for an older person; try not to hit the person standing behind you with your backpack; say please and thank you (or just thank you here – Danes don’t have a word for please); and be polite. If you are in a big group, try not to take up all of the pavement, so other people can get by. Exit the pub quietly. Try to conduct yourself in a way that would make your parents or Gareth Southgate proud.
If this is too many rules to take on, I get it. So I have boiled it down to a single point that all of us can get behind: there is really only one rule when you are visiting another country – don’t be a dick.
