Stereotypes suck. Your sociology teacher probably gave you one of these speeches: “Stereotyping inhibits socializing, it doesn’t even give the person a chance. You go into an interaction with certain preconceived notions. This is unfair and can be harmful. One must never use stereo… SIDIN! STOP TALKING IN CLASS. YOU UNRULY, REBELLIOUS MALAYALI BOYS ARE SUCH PAINS IN THE BACKSIDE. WHY DON’T YOU GET A VISA AND GO TO DUBAI, TOO!… As I was saying people, we must never, ever use stereotypes…”
And, what is the great engine that helps spread such vile ethnic stereotypes all over the world? Bad advertising! And besides that? Global tourism!
With all this economic growth brouhaha, rising incomes and greater connectivity, more people are travelling across the world than ever before. The World Tourism Organization estimates that international tourism generates revenue of over $2 billion per day. And they expect this to grow by around 4% a year till 2020.
(Illustrations by Jayachandran / Mint)
And the intrepid Indian is a sizeable chunk of this pie. A recent Kuoni report on Indian travel projects that India will despatch between 17 million and 20 million outbound tourists marching all over Sentosa, Mt Titlis, New York and other such top destinations by 2020. (Something spectacular, I assume, will happen to tourism in 2020. No one wants to project beyond that. Perhaps teleportation will finally become a reality. Or global warming will wipe out civilization. Either way, don’t make plans for that summer.)
Outfits such as Cox and Kings, Raj Travels, Kesari Tours and Travels and an ever blossoming number of travel websites have all begun to tap into this growth trend. But with more Indians going abroad on holidays, what is happening to the great Indian stereotype?
For centuries we were the land of colours, jewels, elephants, insane maharajas, the rope trick and graduate students in electronics engineering. We were also, by and large, seen as nice and friendly people.
No more. Apparently the globetrotting Indian tourist has put paid to this warm impression.
In 2007, Expedia, an international network of travel websites, published the Best Tourist League Survey report. They painstakingly asked 15,000 hoteliers across Europe what they thought of tourists from various countries. Which ones were polite? Which ones were well dressed? Which ones liked to try out local delicacies such as that Italian cheese which has, yum is the word, maggots thriving in it?
India came second. From the bottom. We were officially only better than the French who, it turns out, are le absolute pits when it comes to leisure travelling etiquette.
Our Chinese brethren, by the way, came in third. So poor is the prevalent reputation of Chinese trippers that in 2006 the government put out guidelines for outbound tourists. Littering, spitting, snatching bus seats and queue-jumping were some of the practices frowned upon.