Austrian rail operator OeBB on Saturday unveiled its new generation of sleeper trains - a response to demands from travellers for less pollutant alternatives to planes and petrol or diesel cars.
19.09.2023 - 00:25 / bbc.com / Christopher Columbus
This summer, every day seems to bring another headline of tourists around the world behaving badly.
Last week, it was two drunk Americans sneaking into a closed section of the Eiffel Tower and sleeping off their bender high above Paris. The previous week, a French woman was arrested for carving a heart and her initials into Italy's iconic Leaning Tower of Pisa. A Canadian teen defaced a 1,200-year-old Japanese temple last month, just after a Bristol-based man etched two names into Rome's Colosseum and told authorities he was unaware of the arena's age. And who could forget the German tourist who crashed a performance inside a sacred Bali temple and stripped naked – after having previously run out on the bill at several local hotels?
It feels like the whole world has forgotten how to act in other people's homes. But while this may seem like the summer of bad tourists, it could just represent a rather uncomfortable truth: as long as people have travelled, we've misbehaved.
From Pompeii to the Egyptian pyramids, some of the world's most famous man-made wonders are scarred with millennia-old graffiti etched into their walls by ancient sightseers. It's no secret that many of the world's "greatest" travellers – like Christopher Columbus and Hernan Cortes – were among its worst. And according to Lauren A Siegel, a tourism and events lecturer at the University of Greenwich in London, as recently as the 18th and 19th Centuries, it was common for British nobles taking the Grand Tour of Europe to belittle and disregard the people and places they were visiting.
What's different about this summer is we're increasingly hearing about bad travellers – and ultimately, this could be a good thing. With each new report of cringeworthy, tone-deaf or just plain disrespectful behaviour, our collective outrage seems to be rising, leading to what could just be a moment of reckoning for bad tourists.
In an age of heightened awareness about privilege and how we treat others from different cultures, this increased focus on entitled and boorish travellers may seem like a natural progression from other recent social movements. But experts suggest a combination of factors are driving bad behaviour abroad, and the newfound attention we're giving it.
According to Siegel, unlike in years past, many travellers today are competing for social media likes and views. "People are reverting to more extreme actions for their Instagram or TikTok feeds," she noted. Ironically, social media accounts like the massively popular Passenger Shaming are also being used to call out insensitive and disrespectful behaviour.
David Beirman, an adjunct fellow at the University of Technology Sydney, noted that nearly 1.5 billion people travelled
Austrian rail operator OeBB on Saturday unveiled its new generation of sleeper trains - a response to demands from travellers for less pollutant alternatives to planes and petrol or diesel cars.
The fascination with theNorthern Lights dates as far back as the beginning of civilization, with the dancing waves of coloured light depicted in French cave paintings as old as 30,000 BC. Typically, they’re only seen in the northern parts of the Northern Hemisphere, near the Arctic Circle, on dark, clear autumn and winter nights. The lights are dependent on unpredictable solar flares ejecting charged particles that collide with gases in the atmosphere, so any trip to see the Northern Lights runs the risk of missing out on the spectacle altogether.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin is a city on the rise; so much so that it just joined our Readers’ Choice Awards list of the best big cities in the US, ranking third—just behind San Diego and Chicago. Long considered nearby Chicago's little sibling, Milwaukee has finally come into its own by growing amongst younger people for its affordability over the Second City, allowing people to buy homes and rent better apartments. Not to mention the growing restaurant scene, new infrastructure increasing walkability, and enough city amenities for the Midwest gem to truly feel desirable—it’s no longer just a small town. And with so many local colleges and a venerated art museum, there is strong curiosity and willingness to embrace the new.
Renowned for its jaw-dropping architecture, world-class museums and mouth-watering street food (did some say deep-dish pizza?) it's no wonder Chicago was voted the second-best city in the world by media and hospitality giant TimeOut.
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Kia Karjalainen and her sister were vacationing in Greece when things took an unexpected turn. “We were in our hotel room, and I suddenly said to my sister, ‘It really, really smells of smoke. Is something burning?’”
While the Caribbean is home to its fair share of wildlife-filled islands—Saint Lucia, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico, to name a few—one of the region’s most underrated ecotourism destinations measures in at just a mere thirteen square kilometers in area. Known as Saba, this dazzling Dutch overseas region holds a king-sized level of biodiversity in spite of its small size, packed full of fascinating fish, reptiles, and birds for visitors to marvel at—and when it comes to avian life in particular, the Saba Bird Fest is one of the island’s most unmissable events.
As the summer travel season comes to a close, one airline is giving travelers a reason to start planning next summer's vacation. Delta Air Lines announced it will be operating its largest trans-Atlantic flight schedule ever, debuting just in time for summer 2024. The airline will be adding new destinations including Naples and bringing back service to Shannon, Ireland. According to Delta, next summer it will operate 260 weekly flights to 18 countries in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK). This includes a new flight from JFK to Munich three times a week that will start on April 9, 2024, and a daily nonstop flight to Shannon, Ireland that will begin on May 23, 2024. The carrier will expand its existing service to Italy — it already flies to Milan, Venice, and Rome — with a new daily service to Naples. It will also resume service between Atlanta and Zurich, Switzerland, four times a week, which had originally been cut in 2019.
If there's one thing New York City does better than most other US destinations, it's overloading the senses.
The Caribbean island of Barbados is preparing for an onslaught.