Are All Tourists Alike Regardless of Nationality? The Perceptions of Dutch Tour-Guides

Do all tourists, regardless of nationality, exhibit the same behavioral characteristics on identical tours? To answer this question, 63 Dutch tour-guides were administered a questionnaire soliciting their opinions on 20 behavioral characteristics of Japanese, French, Italian and American tourists on guided tours in the Netherlands. The results indicated that in 18 out of the 20 behavioral characteristics, there was a significant perceived difference between the four nationalities. In general, the Americans were perceived to be the most distinct and the Italians the most similar to other nationalities. A pair-comparison found that the tour-guides perceived the Italians-Americans to be the most similar to each other in their behavior, followed by French-Italians, Japanese-French, Japanese-Italians, Japanese-Americans and culminating with French-Americans who were perceived to be the most dissimilar. The behavioral characteristic on which the greatest differences by nationality turned up, was “socializing with other tourists.” On this variable, each nationality was perceived to be different from each other nationality. The least number of perceived differences were in the variables of “trust in tourist trades people,” and “letter writing,” where all nationalities were perceived to be alike. PD