Locals Unite to Fight Booze Holidays

I deliberately avoid all travel in Europe, except for business, during the main summer season for two reasons:

• I don’t enjoy masses of people and invariably that is what you get when summer comes and school is out.
• I will not have my holiday ruined by the drunken behaviour of some 20-something on his first holiday without his parents.

Obviously this means I don’t always get the best weather on my holidays, but that is a small price to pay for being able to enjoy the place with the locals rather than being embarrassed by the behaviour of my countrymen and women.

Two stories covered in mainstream media over the past few weeks indicate that I’m not the only one who would like to see the back of people on booze holidays. Locals in the towns of Lloret de Mar in Spain and Malia in Crete have had enough of drunken tourists and demand that changes are made to how their towns are marketed.

In Lloret de Mar residents have threatened with legal actions unless the behaviour of apparently, predominately Danish youths changes. The locals claim that the main responsibility lies with “Ung Rejs”, a Danish travel agency that targets Danish youths with a slogan that reads “We’ll do anything to throw you the ultimate party”.

In Malia residents took to the street on Wednesday last week to protest against outrageous behaviour of allegedly mainly British tourists. According to the locals, tourists’ behaviour has grown so outrageous that the locals no longer dare to venture outside at night.

I’m appalled that it has had to come to this, but I’m also encouraged by the fact that locals have come out and said enough is enough!

Ultimately, I think the responsibility lies with the individual tourist, no matter how young you may be. It is very simple, we are guests in someone else’s town, so we should act accordingly. I suspect most of the people who go on booze holidays wouldn’t dream of behaving the way they do on holiday in their own hometowns, let alone let a visitor behave that way. So I can only see this type of drunken behaviour as a provocative display of total disrespect for the place you’re visiting and its people.

However, I think the locals of Lloret de Mar and Malia are right to attack the travel agencies as well. Travel agencies will need to take responsibility for the services they provide. This includes not marketing destinations as everything-goes booze holidays and getting rid of “events” such as pub crawls and juvenile drinking games that have no place in public places.

Finally local businesses will also need to take some responsibility for the creation of this monster. They have the real power to change things by stopping all co-operation with the travel agencies that arrange the booze holidays. This includes not letting your bar be part of pub crawls, throwing tourists out of your establishment, if they are behaving unacceptably and creating an atmosphere where everything is not focussed around alcohol. Such a change may hurt your profit at first, but it is possible to run a respectable and responsible business and still make a profit.

I sincerely hope that the locals of Lloret de Mar and Malia have started something that will eventually lead to the end of booze holidays and bring about a respectful attitude towards holiday destinations and the people who live there.

To the residents of Lloret de Mar and Malia – if you need a campaign logo or website, I’d be happy to help you out, free of charge.

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