The Reputation of the Ugly American Tourist Won’t Be Easy to Shake
Photo Credit: Americans, like those pictured here, may not be welcomed back as easily in foreign countries as they begin to travel again. Getty Images / Walter Bibikow
Skift Take
If tourists from the United States are unofficial ambassadors to the world, then the worst among them are ensuring that local residents will resent them and more destinations will erect barriers to entry.
If hospitality is all about welcoming guests with a cuddly embrace, then many destinations around the world will likely become increasingly inhospitable to tourists from the United States as more begin to travel again.
Or if these countries indeed don't erect new and official barriers such as exclusionary travel bubbles to visitors from the United States, then many of their citizens may be openly hostile — even with the tradeoff of U.S. dollars that poured into local economies.
With some parallels to the 1960s, when the U.S. role in the Vietnam War spurred global calls of "Yankee Go Home," and when some tourists from the U.S. would have preferred to pass themselves off as the more sympathetically received Canadians, welcome mats are going missing for American tourists in some destinations.
Indeed, American exceptio
