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Comment by capableweb | Hacker News Reader

> Almost all countries actually want US citizens to come there, for tourism purposes

Please do provide evidence of this. Most people I've seen being surveyed in Europe around tourists don't care where they come from, as long as they spend money and don't ruin stuff.

Americans, along with the British and the French, seems to be the groups that most people complained about when it comes to groups vacationing in Europe.

Edit: lot's of people replying, which is great. But none of providing evidence, which is explicitly requested in this comment. Would love to see some hard facts rather than people's anecdotes.

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> Americans, along with the British and the French, seems to be the groups that most people complained about when it comes to groups vacationing in Europe.

Citizens might complain due to the personal habits and practices of individual tourists, but bureaucrats that oversee the tourism industry (in relation to border entry) will have views based on which tourist qualities most positively impact the industry's income.

> Please do provide evidence of this.

Here you go: https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-tourist-hot-spots-suffe...

I submitted this article to HN a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23763588

Obviously most business owners just want tourists to come and spend money, regardless of where they come from. I believe what the above commenter is saying is that American tourists tend to spend the most, either because America has the most people that can afford to travel, or because they spend the most per person. I don't find that unreasonable.

>Americans, along with the British and the French, seems to be the groups that most people complained about when it comes to groups vacationing in Europe.

What's « Europe » ? Different places have very different tourist demographics. The perception of the British in my part of France (we tend to get wealthy, French-speaking types) is very different to that in Amsterdam or Mallorca for example (where the « lads » got touring).

And I can guaranty you that the most universally hated place of origin for tourists across Europe as a whole is China.

Americans are just known for smiling like idiots.

> seems to be the groups that most people complained about

Absolutely not - the group I hear the most complaints about are chinese tourists. Americans mostly have a reputation for being overly friendly to strangers here.

> Please do provide evidence of this. Most people I've seen being surveyed in Europe around tourists don't care where they come from, as long as they spend money and don't ruin stuff.

There are a lot of Americans, they have a lot of money to spend and they like to spend money on travel. Isn't this sort of a self-refuting point?

I suspect people complain about the most common tourists, since they'll be the most visible.

> Most people I've seen being surveyed in Europe around tourists don't care where they come from, as long as they spend money and don't ruin stuff.

Right, but American tourists make up a significant portion of tourist spending. Ergo, if you want tourist money, you want American tourists. Not necessarily more or less than other types of tourists, but that's not important.

Americans are well known for tipping astronomical amounts in relation to most European countries. No doubt due to their crazy social construct of paying for a service and paying the person providing a service separately, which is pretty foreign in most European nations.

If you are ignorant it is not on everyone else to bring you upto speed. There have been several articles on this already. Here is something you should try. Next time, goto a tourist hotspot such as Iceland or Venice and ask the locals there - which country citizens do they like the most. And they will tell you straight.

" Most people I've seen being surveyed in Europe around tourists don't care where they come from,"

When 50% of your tourists are absent, because Americans are not allowed in, and you're out of business ... 'you care where they come from'.

This is bad for everyone and it's not just tourism.

That might be a Europe specific thing. A lot of the parts of the world I've seen like US tourists because they have a culture of tipping generously, which is not always the case for Europeans.

They don’t care where the tourists come from but they still want a healthy number of tourists to keep the industry going. Americans form a sizeable block of that.

And yes, plenty of people complain about American tourists. Frankly with good reason. But it all comes down to money.

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