UK Ferry Tickets

Are you arrogant, unfriendly and lacking in any sense of humour?

Hopefully not, but in the eyes of the world British people – and in particular the English – are, according to research carried out by VisitBritain, the organisation which promotes Britain overseas.

Visitors from 35 different nations listed Britain as 16^th overall on a list of countries likely to offer the best welcome.

The ‘famous’ British sense of humour received the lowest scores in any category and the Italians rated us as the least funny nation of all. Meanwhile, the report claimed the French did not believe they would receive a warm welcome if they visited the UK.

German respondents said we were neither creative, lively or innovative, which you could say is a bit rich coming from them.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Argentina ranked Britons 31^st in terms of friendliness, prompting the report to state that improving Argentinians’ perceptions of us was a key challenge.

After writing about the travel industry for donkeys’ years, and having heard just about every country’s tourist board claim they have the ‘friendliest people’, I have a theory about all this.

I believe the reception you receive is more dependent on the type of place you visit, than the country.

I live in London where you could virtually drop dead in the street without people noticing. The same is true of other big cities, such as New York.

However, I grew up in a small village in the Midlands and, even now, it is difficult to walk to the local shop without people stopping you for a ‘hello’ and a chat.

In a hot, laid back climate such as the Caribbean, of course you will often receive a warm welcome from workers; put the same people in a busy bar in central London and the reception might be a bit different.

Also, the perception of nation’s inhabitants is often coloured by the actions of their government. There is currently much hostility towards the US and the UK around the world because of the war in Iraq, even though it has little to do with ordinary Americans and Britons. People say we bear responsibility because we voted the governments in, but the truth is that all the major parties on both sides of the pond supported the war, so we would have got it anyway.

Of course, all nationalities have traits (the Americans aren’t great on irony, for example) but why change that or make excuses for it?

The public relations manager for VisitBritain said: “Our sense of humour is very different, it’s dry and quirky. That is one of the things that makes us such a unique destination – we have to get that message across.”

Guest Article by Jeremy Skidmore

Saturday, September 30th, 2006