The recent media and online campaign against Saudi and Gulf tourists' behavior abroad, in Europe in particular, and the rumors and calls to reduce the number of visas provided to Saudi and Gulf tourists, have become a cause for alarm.
Although some of the practices and behavior of some of the tourists have been really shameful and embarrassing, it should, however, not reflect on the vast majority of Saudi or Gulf tourists. The way things are being pictured in the campaign against the Saudi and Gulf tourists is as if the tourists are ruining the country they are visiting and trashing all the streets there and causing all sorts of damages.
Nevertheless, we need to shed light on some of the strange practices committed by some of the tourists abroad, which shows the level of ignorance of the tourists. What was really shocking to me is seeing the group of Gulf tourists grabbing a duck from the public park and putting it in a bag. Worst was the man filming the event making an absurd statement while laughing hysterically saying that they will now take it back to the hotel where they are staying to cook it.
I don't know how to classify this crass action — as stupid, crazy, insane, ignorant or all the mentioned above rolled together as one. It makes me question the basic fact that how did their parents raise them? Don't these people get it that people in Western countries have a fascination with domesticated animals, especially ducks, swans and birds. Locals in these countries enjoy just viewing birds at parks and ducks on the lake. They enjoy feeding them and not hunting and eating them.
Then there was this image of two people under the Eiffel Tower in Paris smoking sheesha. It boggles one's mind, whether they were trying to show off to the world with a daredevil activity or did they think that since they had paid their way to Paris, they then can do whatever they wanted to or whatever came to their mind. As if, these rank actions were not enough there were reports of some tourists being seen cooking beside a lake and having a merry picnic as they do at home. Like they do at home, the tourists had brought their own cooking equipment from Saudi Arabia and were using huge pots to cook. The sight of the pots and pans must have really beggared the Europeans' belief for they may have never seen such huge pots in their whole life.
I can well imagine the ruckus that might have been created by this impromptu picnic by the lake where this huge quantity of food was being cooked. The sight must have been really shocking for the locals. Now I do not want to picture the quantity of garbage left behind in public places since we know the situation here in our own country, when families go out and enjoy themselves and leave behind tons of garbage for the municipality to pick and throw.
If adults were causing this much damage, then imagine what children were doing. There was a clip circulating in the social media of a group of young children from the Gulf riding their bicycles inside a hotel lobby. A hotel employee, who witnessed this, was left standing stunned for he had never seen something like this before in his service. Of course another sad video clip of a group of children jumping up and down a public statue, installed in a garden, added fuel to the already raging social media fire. What was even sadder was that the families of the children were nearby watching and doing nothing. I guess they thought that trashing public property is a child's sport.
According to a statement from an official at the Saudi Embassy in Austria, which was published in a local daily, the embassy received ten cases against Saudi tourists out of 60,000 who are vacationing there. He sees this number as normal given the huge number of tourists.
Who is to blame here? I think it is the lack of law enforcement against violators here. A tourists who is littering our gardens and public places, sees this as a normal behavior because there are cleaners who clean behind him. He will take this attitude outside and apply it thinking that people will not despise his behavior nor will he get punished for it if caught. Our people are committing violations in destroying public properties, breaking rules on the road, bargaining while shopping when the price is fixed, being rude in public, behaving loudly and committing many other things that should be cautioned.
The campaign against our tourists abroad is a wake up call for us to enforce laws against negative behavior here because we are done with repeated awareness drives. Realistically, no one is going to hold a seminar on how to behave abroad for families going outside the Kingdom. But if we do not enforce rules against littering, against violators on the road, against people damaging public property, then people will be not disciplined and that will reflect on their behavior abroad.
We need to be educated before we travel, and they should care about the image of their country as they are good will envoys of our nation, but then again, such people do not care about the laws of their own country how then will they care about the laws of another nation?
The writer can be reached at [email protected] Twitter: @anajeddawi—eng
