Going on a guided tour of a museum or nature site while you're traveling is a great way to learn more about the world. A good tour guide is an invaluable resource of local info and fun trivia to tell folks back home. So it's surprising that so many tourists immediately forget all their manners as soon as the tour starts! We asked seasoned tour guides from around the world to dish on the rude, dumb, and just plain idiotic tourists they've had to put up with.
47. Don't pull the plumage.
I was working on a tourist island in Australia when this man pulled out almost all the back feathers of a peacock because he wanted to keep one. He sneaked up behind it, and grabbed a huge handful and yanked them all out. He was immediately escorted off the island. The peacock had a huge bare patch and most of its beautiful feathers were gone.
46. Those fish aren't friendly.
I had a guest, snorkeling try and grab the tail of a barracuda as he swam up behind it. Luckily I was able to hit the guest with a dive fin from the boat to stop him before he got ahold. If he had grabbed on, I’m sure he would have been ripped to pieces by that fish.
45. Can't take it with you.
Was on a tour of a small cave system somewhere in west Texas. It was really beautiful and right after the guide told us how long it took for all the stalagmites and stalactites to form she turned around to move on and some guy leans way over and snaps off a small one and shoved it in his pocket!!! I was so surprised I just stared at him and he smiled and winked at me like we had really gotten away with something and I was a co-conspirator or something
44. Repels everything, including bears.
In Wyoming it is common to buy bear spray (highly concentrated pepper spray) when heading into Yellowstone. One tourist believed it was bear repellent, lined up his family and sprayed all of them. Chemical burns for everyone!
As a raft guide we regularly got asked whether we would be passing the same spot/going through the same rapid later in the journey. We would reply "why yes, this is actually one of the only circular rivers in the world!"
43. Wasn't much there to damage.
I work at a brewery tap room and take people on brewery tours. During fermentation CO2 is produced and excess comes out through a run off pipe and into a water bucket. One of the attendees (who was being a pain and trying to be funny but nobody was laughing) asked me what the pipe was for, so I gladly explained. He then asked what would happen if he breathed it in... in disbelief of his stupidity I told him he would pass out/damage his brain, he then proceeded to grab the pipe and take a breath. He was then ejected and barred. Some people are just beyond belief.
42. It had a call to make.
I was a tour guide at a university. Small group gets into our gardens where there's a big turtle pond. Girl gets excited and wants a close up of the largest snapping turtle. Girl loses her phone to the turtle and tries to get the university to buy her a new one. Girl was lucky she still has all her fingers.
41. Nothing's sacred anymore.
Couple of guys I used to play cricket with went on a school trip to Auschwitz and decided to steal a small pair of glasses and some buttons they found half buried in the ground. They were detained by Polish police while they were leaving the site. Hard to know what goes through people’s heads sometimes.
40. Everyone takes a turn.
I’m a bush pilot in Alaska and occasionally do glacier air tours of my boss asks (I’m not a fan of doing tours).
One day I’m doing a glacier tour and had probably 7 people onboard and the dude sitting next to just looks at me and says “I’m the captain now” and yanks the plane 30 degrees to the right and then lets go and laughs saying he was just kidding. There was yelling to follow via my mouth.
39. But we want to meet him.
My Girlfriend worked at the Sherlock Holmes museum in London (at 221b Baker Street) and apparently a surprising number of fully grown adults are under the impression that Sherlock Holmes is an actual living person who really lives there.
The worst part was that they weren't allowed to disabuse the guests of their misconception so when the guests would ask "where is Sherlock Holmes" she'd have to say something like "Oh he's just out on a case at the moment". Seriously weird.
38. On a cold, clear evening on the Bay.
I was on one of those Big Bus tours of San Francisco in the evening. Last ride for the night. The tour guide probably mentioned five times before leaving that it would be freezing up top and that no one could go up or down the stairs during the hour tour because it was dangerous.
This couple was at the top with their INFANT (wearing nothing but a onesie with a thin bed sheet over the carrier). The tour guide suggested multiple times that they stay downstairs since it would be freezing. Well, it felt something like 30 degrees or less and the poor baby was crying the entire time before we had to pull over (after 30-40 minutes) so the couple could take their popsicle baby inside the bus to thaw out. Best parents of the year, choosing a better view over their baby's well being.
37. More entertaining than the tour.
I was giving a tour of my university to the mother of a potential student. She tried to recruit me into a popular pyramid scheme and then, when I tried to change the subject by asking what she did in her spare time, she told me about her conspiracy theories that she gives public talks on. They included the dangers of Wi-Fi, 5G, and chemtrails, and that the moon landings were faked by Stanley Kubrick, who was shortly thereafter assassinated by the CIA and replaced by a clone.
I cut the tour short. Felt pretty sorry for her daughter who appeared to think these theories were reasonable and had also been recruited into her mother's pyramid scheme at 17.
36. Wow, parents.
On an open topped tour bus in London, a woman tries to dangle her toddler over the railing, then starts saying she's going to complain to my manager when I told her to stop. Caught her doing it again and company policy said that anyone endangering their kids like that was to be removed from the tour, so the driver had to come up and march her off. She still insisted she did nothing wrong. Like, she literally had the kid's feet on the side rail of the (moving) bus and was just holding him loosely round the waist. One low hanging tree branch, of which there were many on the route, and that kid was gone.
35. He got what he deserved.
Used to be a tourguide at a primate sanctuary with a strict 'no touching policy'. At the end of the tour there's a suspension bridge, tourists go first, guide goes last as per the rules. I always warn the tourists that the other side is the territory of a Hanuman langur and he doesn't mess around, keep your distance etc. He doesn't attack people out of nowhere, but he likes showing his teeth and screaming, which scares tourists.
Anyway, one tour I get to the other side of the bridge, and a tourist got bitten. He says a monkey just bit him out of nowhere. Asked the other tourists, no he tried to pet the Hanuman.
34. Frat king in the making.
I used to give tours at my university. There was a group of middle schoolers I was giving a tour to (to show them why they should want to go college).
There was this one kid who kept trying to sneak away and was whistling at just about every girl who walked by. Weird. Okay, whatever, he thinks he's a big shot.
Then a very attractive girl comes jogging by us, and he tried to GRAB HER and starts AIR HUMPING while he watches her run away from us. I was mortified.
I ended the tour. I was done with him. The teachers didn't even care, that was probably the worst part.
33. Stupid comes in all stripes.
My uncle was a tour guide in Iceland, some time ago. He once guided a group of Americans around the country and stopped at a glacier in the middle of nowhere. He explained to the group that this glacier had been here for thousands of years and that it doesn't melt. The group then went back to the bus to carry on, but my uncle notices that a woman was carrying a big piece of the glacier towards the bus, so he stops her and says: "I'm sorry, you can't bring that onto the bus, it will melt." The woman quickly responded: "But you said it doesn't melt." My uncle stood there for a while, dumbfounded by the amount of stupidity that was in that answer, before finally saying: "Okay, but you'll have to put it in your backpack and keep it in there for the whole journey." The woman readily agreed and started to empty her backpack to make space for the big block of ice. Needless to say this didn't end well for the woman, as the ice obviously melted in her bag.
32. Foot in mouth.
I'm a helicopter pilot and I used to fly tourists to the bottom of the Grand Canyon for a picnic. The World Trade Center attacks had happened a few years prior to this event. As we were flying over the canyon, a gentleman (who was nursing a hangover) asked if we could fly over a certain landmark. After telling him I could lose my job if I did so, he asked "What if I put a gun to your head?". You could feel the tension from the other passengers in the aircraft. I told him he shouldn't say things like that to me. I could tell he was just trying to be funny and he knew he messed up. When we landed in Vegas he told me he expected cops to be waiting, thanked me for not calling the cops and tipped me $100.
31. Thanks for the contribution.
My cousin is a tourist guide and biologist, most of his tours are in Africa. He instructed his group of 20-25 people including kids not to wear any type of earrings or collars especially shiny stuff since they were about to go into a thick forest to try to see a bunch of animals. This is very important because 20-25 make a lot of noise which makes wild animals run away or hide, it's even worse if they're wearing shiny stuff they can spot from far away. Ok so this woman complains, decides to wear shiny earrings anyway, cousin tells her to get rid of them or she ain't coming with the group so she obeys but puts them on a bit later.
Some species of monkeys in that area LOVE shiny stuff. They ripped the earrings from her ears.
30. Just testing to see if it works.
I was doing a tour of our production facility to some people from head office. As we got to one of the pallet out-feeds, I mentioned the light curtain which was a safety feature that stopped the conveyors once the light was broken, and so for some damn reason one of the ladies decides to stick her hand through the light to test it, stopping the production line and also risking her safety by doing it in the first place.
I asked her not to do that again and went about resetting the machine to start up again. No more than 3 seconds after doing so she stuck her hand through the curtain again stopping everything. She looked at me with the most stupid expression on her face as I basically said "what is wrong with you". To this day I don't know why she did it or what her deal was.
29. False accusation falls flat.
I'm a tour guide at my university. I led a tour with a very overbearing father and his quiet daughter, among 4 other people. As I led the tour, I tried my best to gear the information toward the students' interests and chosen programs to make sure they got the most information.
In the middle of my tour, I referred to the daughter's program and the dad just blew up, yelling at me that his daughter is underage and it's unprofessional that I hit on her on the tour. He asked to speak to my supervisor, who helped me explain to him that I'm gay and I had had a boyfriend for almost a year at that point.
28. That is convenient.
When I was in France touring WWI and WWII memorials, the actual tour guide didn't speak English, so I was commissioned to be the translator for all the British and American tourists. I was Assistant to the Regional Tour Guide.
We were at Verdun, and it was a pretty free-for-all tour where the kids could somewhat play alongside the craters' edges, to really drive home the eeriness of a war zone overtaken by normalcy. Anyway, Middle-Aged American Bimbo says about the explosion sites, "Wow, all of the craters and hills here must have been really convenient for the fighting! They're lucky they picked such a location!"
LADY ARE YOU FOR REAL?
27. Leave the wildlife alone.
I was teaching a couple of tourists to surf and a dolphin came near us and they screamed "SHARKS!!!!!!!" and ran in to the shore and told the lifeguard. The lifeguard swam out to me and I showed him that it was a dolphin.
Also! There is this cove called La Jolla cove that has a reef and everything that is home to a bunch of fish and sea lions. So I'm showing these people around the cove with snorkels and I notice a couple is missing. THEY HAD CLIMBED UP ONTO THE ROCKS WITH THE SEA LIONS ON THEM AND WERE GOING TO PET THEM. I started screaming at them along with the life guards because the sea lions were starting to freak out. I put them back on the beach and told them not to move. Guess where they were from? ARIZONA.
26. Say goodbye to your pinky.
Tour guide/boat captain in the Caribbean.
We had about 40/50 people on the boat, got off. We would normally go feed swimming pigs which someone would get nipped from them from doing something stupid but nothing too serious. Well the next stop after that was another island where we would hand feed turtle, sharks, and stingrays. So we would tell the people to hold it with the the palm open and food in the middle for the stingrays and they would come over the top and take it out. The turtles and the sharks put it in the water holding it in the tips and when they are coming for it let go. Well of course, this dingus decided he would be tough and feed this baby shark, no longer than your forearm without letting go. Shark proceeds to bite his fingers, he screams and jumps up out of the water and flicks it off of his hand, pulling one of his finger nails off in the process.
So that's one I always remember.
25. On the move.
I used to work as a tour guide for the college I go to. As part of my job, I gave segway tours to prospective students and their families.
One time I was with a couple families, and one of them had a 10 year old boy with them. I was leading them through the tour and at one point we were in a parking lot getting ready to park the segways before heading inside a building.
The 10 year old boy had gotten off of his too early and was trying to get back on to catch up to the rest of the group. Instead of getting on the segway when it's stationary like you're supposed to, the kid tried to jump on after getting a running start.
He completely flipped over the front of the segway and landed helmet first on the parking lot concrete. He was fine, but instead of checking on him like a good tour guide I started laughing uncontrollably. As you can guess I wasn't that family's favorite person after that.
24. Not even in the bath?
Former whitewater rafting guide. There's a calmer section of the river people can, if they choose to, hop out and swim through. They are wearing life jackets so you can just float through it.
This woman decides she wants to try it and hops out. After she pops up she slowly tilts forward until just the back of her jacket is out of the water and she's completely still. After 5 or so seconds of this I start to realize this might not be intentional and paddle over and physically pick her head up above the water followed by her gasping for air. I haul her in the boat and ask what happened.
She said she didn't know what to do as she'd "never been submerged in water before". 1) why are you on a whitewater rafting trip? 2) why didn't your strategy involve moving your body?
23. Just gotta touch it.
I’ve got a couple from my time tour guiding at an aquarium. First, a barramundi (a very large fish), jumped out of an open tank and landed on the guest walkway. Despite me telling everybody not to touch it and it would be fine until help got here, one man tried to throw it back in and cut his hand really bad on the scales. Eventually the fish was returned to the water, but then we found the guest had hepatitis B, and nobody was sure how that would effect fish.
Next, the main exhibit to the aquarium is a giant reef tank. The guest walkway was about 7-8 feet above the water. Three men and a woman clumsily tried to hold the woman down so she could pet a sting ray. I thought they had to be joking because of how far the water down was, not to mention how deep in the water the stingrays were past that. They weren’t. Security was called and they were escorted out of the building.
I’ve since moved on to leading tours in a distillery. Guest are really good about not touching anything. Unless of course you tell them the machinery is hot, then they will touch it just to make sure.
22. Nothing shrimpy about it.
Was a part time tour guide. There was this chinese couple from mainland China who went to a top-end hotel buffet, where there were top dignitaries and VIP guests around. They took one plate in each hand (that's 4 plates in total) and swaggered up to the prawns section, cutting the queue of about 10 people along the way while seemingly oblivious to the glares they received.
That's when the real shocker came. Instead of using the tongs provided, they used their plates to literally dig, like a shovel, at the tub of prawns. They were using their plates as shovels to scoop out copious amount of prawns as if they had been starving for prawns for an eternity. Everyone was mortified at such crude behavior and despite the stunned silence and stares, they just walked away with about 4 absolutely stacked plates of prawns. Their demeanor was as if they were kings and queens, their head held high while walking back to their table as if everyone were insects beneath them.
I had to go up and tell them that such behavior was unacceptable in our country. Thankfully they were willing to listen. It always amazes me how people can be so wealthy but lacking the class and dignity of their economic status.
21. But the point is, they used to.
I was working in a room in a fairly well known attraction in the UK, when an American family walked in. Now, it was a pretty long tour through the building and the kid was getting a bit bored and restless, so I started taking to him and pointed out the cool picture of St George and the Dragon on the wall. I asked him if he knew the story, and he did not. Neither did his mother - maybe it's not that common over the other side of the pond, I thought.
So, I was happy to be the first to tell this kid the classic story of George and the Dragon, and he was suitably entertained. The mother then asks if it really happened, to which I think she means if the story was based on any historical event. I go off on a quick outline of the historical St George, and how he had really nothing to do with England and that dragon slaying myths pops up everywhere in Europe, so it's unlikely to be based on anything in English history.
The poor woman looks confused and asks "but they must have had some battles like that at some stage before they were all hunted, right?"
"Madam, Dragons don't exist." Not a sentence I thought I'd have to ever say while working there.
20. Destroying history one reel at a time.
I'm in the middle of talking and someone's phone rings. Ok, that happens sometimes, and usually they'd just cancel the call or step outside. Nope, this guy answers the call and starts talking on the phone, only a few metres from where I'm standing. I think, 'oh he'll just quickly explain he's busy and end the call', nope! He starts a conversation... The rest of the group glare at him and I'm put in an awkward position because my workplace puts a huge emphasis on politeness. So I suggest to him to continue his call in the hallway, just outside the room we were in, to which he replied 'no, I'm fine here', and went back to his phone conversation. I'm doing my best to talk to the rest of the group (about 25 people), but he's so loud! Eventually this Chinese woman yells across the room at him "shut up, we want to listen to the lady, not you" which worked. But I just couldn't imagine the nerve to ruin everyone's experience like that, cuz you're too selfish to talk on the phone outside.
Also, the place I worked allowed photos but had a strict 'no photos of the staff' rule for privacy reasons. I always explained this at the start and 99% of people were cool. One day I had a particularly happy snapper who got right up in a staff members face to take a photo, like I'm taking centimetres from his face to take a photo. The staffer was just some random middle aged white dude, so I'm not sure why the fascination, but he was livid. It's like I saw it happen in slow motion so couldn't do anything to stop it. That guy was removed from the tour.
10. We would do the same.
I wasn't the tour guide but I was on a tour of Namibia and had a Zimbabwean guide who was telling us his craziest stories. He had a couple that was married who were on their honeymoon who were on one of his trips. One night, everyone is sitting around the fire and chatting (just as we were) and this couple gets up to go to the bathroom. This is a campsite so they walk off into the darkness towards the toilets. A few minutes later the guy runs back alone, crying and panicking. Everyone asks him what happened. "I think my wife was killed by a lion." Gasp, shock. Everyone is freaked out, asking him what happened, and as he's trying to explain, the now-irate wife walks up to the campsite and starts yelling. So what had happened? Well, they'd walked off, and at some point near the toilets, they both heard a kind of snuffling noise in the underbrush, clearly an animal rooting around. The husband completely freaks out, pushes his wife towards the noise and down to the ground, screams, and runs away. Spoiler alert, it was not a lion and the wife was not pleased at the attempts at being sacrificed. The guide told us that they didn't speak the entire rest of the trip and then he believes they got divorced. Hilarious.
9. It's historically accurate.
I was a tour guide at a historic village museum (similar to Colonial Williamsburg). The worst thing was the blatant harassment by some older male visitors towards our female guides (some who obviously look under 16) who wear the old fashioned dresses. You'd be surprised how many men on group tours openly ask our staff members to show them what's under their dress, talk about how it used to be acceptable to marry girls under 16 and how they wish it was still acceptable, or make pretty gross remarks about our staff members in front of the group and I. When you would call them out on their behavior as being inappropriate they would act like you were wrong for getting offended by it and that we should accept it since we were demonstrating life in the 18th century. I heard and saw some pretty bad stuff which would make both the other guests and staff uncomfortable.
It also wasn't uncommon for people to sneak away from the tour group to go into restricted areas in an attempt to hunt the ghosts which are supposedly on the property. Theres a reason those places are out of bounds, there can be irreplaceable artifacts we don't want accidentally damaged, tools, or the area hasn't been cleared by the fire marshal to allow guest access. Small things have been broken by people doing this. People love to get confrontational about being told they can't go into restricted areas or touch the artifacts despite all the signs hung up.
8. Swimming happens naturally.
I once was a tour guide in high school for a group of young Chinese students coming to the rural US on a sort of “fresh air” trip. They told us beforehand that we had to keep the kids away from water because apparently parents don’t value swimming lessons in China and there is such little open swimmable water that no one learns on their own. We were also told that the kids think swimming happens “naturally” — like if you go into water, you’ll immediately start swimming.
Anyways, one of our excursions was to a local reservoir and the plan was to hike up a hill nearby to overlook the reservoir lake, get a few photos, and then leave. When we got to the top, it started POURING rain like I had never seen before. I’m talking so much rain you can’t see 5 feet in front of you. Then lightning starts striking the lake and I’m still trying to keep it cool even though I had never been so close to lightning before. The students were taking it well and laughing, which was good, until they started running directly for the lake and jumping in. Apparently they had also never learned about electricity conducting through water, so I’m freaking out and start pulling them out of the water (they weren’t in very far) and a couple of them complain that their phones were wet... in the rain.
No one got hurt, but it was a crazy day.
7. Put the hat on.
I'm from just outside of Atlanta, GA. I also had zero relatives who fought in the Civil War. That is important to the story.
I interned up in Massachusetts at a museum one summer. It was a great opportunity. A lot of the museum focused on the local Revolutionary War history, as well as the War of 1812. I did double duty as the gift shop attendant and tour guide. We got a lot of interesting tourists.
One of the best stories is one of our many Chinese tour groups. By and large they were always picture happy, but generally respectful. We had just changed out an exhibit, and the newest one was focused on the local people who had fought in the Civil War. There were a couple of local folks who had gone to fight for the Confederacy, and we had a mannequin display with a recreation uniform. The mannequin had a Confederate battle flag draped over his arm.
When giving the tour of the room, I often brought up the educational differences between the way modern day schools talk about the war in different parts of the country. One of the tourists piped up and said, "So you are Confederacy?" I said, "No, that was a long time ago, and none of my family was involved. I was just born in Georgia." But they started talking to each other quickly in Chinese, and one of them grabbed the hat off the mannequin.
Next thing I know, half the group is taking pictures, and the other half is trying to get this hat on me and tossing the flag at me. I had to grab both of them back. I tried to put them back in their correct places, ask them not to touch anything, and carry on with the tour. Turns out, as soon as I left the room to take them into the hallway, they grabbed them again and started trying to get me to put them on.
I didn't have the authority to ask people to leave the museum (intern) so I radioed for my supervisor. He instead agreed to finish the tour, but if anything else was touched the group would be thrown out. Someone picked up a 200 year old painting on the 2nd floor that wasn't behind glass yet, and they were told to not come back.
I have so many stories from that place. Tourists are weird.