From the BBC website:<BR><BR>"Research by online travel service Expedia suggests Brits abroad are the least well-regarded by foreigners. They are the rudest, meanest, most linguistically incompetent and least adventurous holidaymakers, the study published on Friday (July 19) claims (...). Overall, the British finished bottom of the league table of 24 nations, which was topped by the Germans, Americans and Japanese."

Not disagreeing with the survey, however, a study of 24 nations doesn't represent the "world" now does it?!

Maybe just the part of the "world" worth visiting!

Betty<BR><BR>So only 24 nations in the world worth visiting then? Small minded?! Perhaps...

The 24 nations polled are what is known as a sample. We read polls every day, but never expect that they have asked everyone in the world the questions, only a select few. If done correctly, this should give a fairly accurate representation of the population which the sample represents (+/- 4% or so). Now the question is, how "scientifcally sound" was this poll? You got me there.

All I ever said was that it didn't mean we were the "World's worst" necessarily...!

Gallup, you're right, since I couldn't find anywhere what the basis for this "research" was: how many people were asked these essential questions? who were they ? out of how many countries? when this that take place? was it a random Internet survey or a more scientifically monitored one? All this mystery leads us to take the results with a pinch of salt. But, judging by my own experience, yes, a certain type of British tourists - loud, laddish, young package tourists going to cheap Mediterranean resorts to get drunk and laid to try to forget decades of Victorian frustration - are to be avoided. Which is easy, since I would never go to Ibiza or Aya Napa in the first place. But independent British tourists are, in my opinion, among the most flexible and discrete, and great travel companions. Another case of class divide, I suppose...

Perhaps the 24 nations mentioned are the ones with the most citizens who travel abroad. Remember, it was poll about foreign toruists, not destinations. The reality is thay most citizens in second and third world countries aren't going on holiday.<BR><BR>

I'm shocked. I would've thought the Germans were the clear winners of that competition.

Gallup<BR><BR>Isn't the "sample" the percentage or the individuals selected to be surveyed from the "population" of the poll? In other words, the sample should deliver a statistically valid estimation of the ture percentages that the population as a whole has. There is no way to extrapolate beyond the countries surveyed. Furthermore, for the responses to be valid, the sample needs to be statistically valid.... that is it needs to represent, statistically, the demographics of the population. So if the survey was collected by computer ofver the internet, you are getting a sample of niternet users and not of the country's residents in general.

It has emerged that the sample was made up of workers in the tourist trade of several Mediterranean resorts dominated by the British package holiday market. And the findings are certainly no surprise, however much they are depressing.