January 29, 2018
We've looked at past research on holidaymakers' biggest bugbears and have put together a rundown of irksome and annoying holiday habits. You know, the things that really wind us up when we're on our jollies.
Which ones really get your goat? Let us know on social media!
10.'Reserving' a sunbed with a towel
Starting with the beds, it's the Germans that we Brits love to blame that travel sin of laying your beach towel on a poolside hotel sunbed from about 6am in the morning and thereby claiming it as “yours”.
Interestingly enough though, TravelSupermarket research discovered that, despite popular belief, it’s the Brits that are twice as likely to reserve a sunbed with a towel.
However, that doesn’t mean our European cousins are angels in the matter, either. A survey from the German tour operator Urlaubstours found an overwhelming 69% of them objected to finding a nice, warm sun-lounger covered with a towel by… a fellow German tourist.
9. Flashing too much flesh
Only one out of a 100 respondents to an On the Beach survey on Brits’ worst holiday bugbears were bothered by topless sunbathing, tiny “budgie smuggler” Speedos and the occasional wild card beach nudist.
But given that the holiday company quizzed 16,500 holidaymakers, that’s still a fair few travellers tutting over excess flesh when you extrapolate to the holidaying hordes.
Maybe we Brits are just a little more hung up about getting our kit off – Lastminute.com’s ‘Summer Snapshot 2015’ found that a third of Brits would be annoyed if their partner went topless. Germans, comparatively speaking, love it – 28% of them, according to Expedia’s Flip Flop report, enjoy a spot of nude sunbathing.
8. Noisy children
Take kids away on holiday and what do they do? Only act like kids and noisily enjoy it.
Some 7% of respondents to an On the Beach survey objected to children making a racket in-resort. Among them, it’s surely fair to assume, were a fair few holidaymakers without kids or who had forgotten they once were one.
Want a child-free holiday? You could always try a so-called “adults-only” resort, although they do sound like something rather different.
7. Kicking plane-seat backs
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. What about those travel irritants before you even arrive at the resort?
Airports were the second most cited annoyance in a Telegraph survey of travel irritants, irking 23% of respondents – but there’s possibly even more to get hot under the collar about once you board the plane.
Meanwhile, a CNN report found a grand total of 20 annoying things other people do on planes, concluding that the most irritating by far was the person behind you kicking your seat back.
6. Luggage bin abuse
Another prime irritant cited in the CNN story was hogging that precious overhead bin space with your carry-on items. A typical conundrum of low-cost, short-haul air travel, it’s not uncommon to see grown adults turn to infants as they squabble and battle for every last inch of cabin space, even if it’s above a seat 20 rows in front of their own.
Some of the other air-travel offenders were exposing your bare, ie smelly, feet to other passengers. Aeroplanes are pressure-cooker environments, where otherwise harmless behaviour easily becomes magnified to thermonuclear irritant level, so we’re sure you have your own “plane annoying” activities to share.
5. 1,001 lights in your hotel room
You’ve survived the plane. Now there’s the hotel to cope with.
In a rundown for the MSN Australia website of everything a hotel room can possibly get wrong, the travel writer David Whitley cites excessively complicated lighting arrangements where you have to “perform an extensive safari of the room, switching every [light] off individually, frequently finding that flipping one switch turns another light back on”.
A master switch by the bed to turn all lights off at once is his solution.
4. The scourge of the selfie stick
From the outside world’s perspective, they look ridiculous. From the picture’s perspective, they look even dafter – who really wants a picture with a huge stick down the middle of it? Unsurprisingly, a number of Brits find the fad annoying with Teletext Holidays research revealing that over-the-top use of selfie sticks winds up 28% of other holiday goers.
But just when it seemed as if every spectacular view on earth was destined to be recorded in the tackiest way possible for ever more, certain iconic sights have begun to ban the stick citing “safety” as the issue. We think the folks at the Colosseum in Rome had just had enough of these annoying inventions, though.
3. “Insane Instagrammers”
Sticking with the modern photo theme, the same Teletext survey found that 32% of people felt that obsessive Instagram users were the most annoying thing about holidays of the digital age. And the most heinous of crimes? Constantly uploading pictures of food and drink.
These are the people who, according to TravelSupermarket research, are 16 times more likely to post a picture of their pain au chocolat or croque-monsieur than the iconic Louvre Museum while on holiday in Paris – yes, they exist.
2. Drunk Brits
Back to those Germans. After their sunlounger-hogging countryfolk, not too far down the list of German travel irritants, according to the Urlaubstours survey, were us the British.
We were the second most bothersome nationality Germans encountered on holiday, better than Russians but not as nice as Poles.
German holidaymakers characterised their British counterparts as drunk, rowdy, sloppily dressed and lacking table manners, the Telegraph reports.
But guess what? There seems to be a pattern here because it turns out that one of Brits biggest holiday bugbears is also other, drunk Brits.
Some 56% of respondents to a Telegraph survey objected to fellow Brits staggering about a resort after one all-inc local-spirit cocktail too many.
1. Beach selling
The beach, for many, is the the most important place for a holiday – except when there’s someone bothering you with trays of knock-off watches, boxes of iced drinks, racks of gaudy sarongs or even comedy carved fruit.
In fact, beach-selling was the most oft-cited travel annoyance in the On the Beach study of British travel hates.
Sure, the locals have to make a living but it’s the tireless persistence, once we’ve refused the items on offer, that really gets one’s goat.
If we want to go to shopping, runs the objection, we’ll go to the shops! And we certainly don’t need our hair plaited on the beach like Bo Derek.
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