The study by travel company Expedia asked 4,500 hotels (including stores and restaurants) worldwide to rank tourists on their behaviour. Japanese tourists - seen as clean and tidy, polite, quiet and uncomplaining - came top for the third year running.
The French are seen by hoteliers as the world's worst tourists, coming across as penny-pinching, rude and terrible at languages. And the French were the least ready to try a new language, unlike US tourists who were most likely to swallow their pride and order a pizza, baguette or a paella in the local lingo.
Jonathan Cudworth, the head of product marketing at Expedia.co.uk, said: "Being voted the worst tourists in the world by our closest neighbours highlights the fact that the 'Brits Abroad' moniker is a label we still haven't managed to shrug off.
The Japanese came top for their politeness and cleanliness "While we are in second place in the global best-tourist rankings, we clearly have a job to do to convince our European counterparts and those at home that we can be better behaved on holiday." (AFP, BBC)

- Japan
- Britain
- Canada
- Germany
- Switzerland
- Holland
- Australia
- Sweden
- USA
- Denmark