China to Blacklist Tourist Displaying Bad Behavior Abroad

China has decided to create a ‘blacklist’ for tourist behaving badly overseas. The country’s National Tourism Administration (NTA) will maintain a database on travellers who commit offense, with their names passed onto police, customs officials and even banks.

Tourists who act anti-socially on public transport, damaging private or public property, disrespecting local customs, sabotaging historical exhibits or engaging in gambling or pornographic activities will be included in the blacklist for their obnoxious tourist behavior.

Offenders will be blacklisted for two years. With the boom of the middle class in China there has been a great deal of economic rise. The middle class was in complete isolation in the last century is now hungry for foreign travel.

Tourists from China took around 100 million outbound trips in 2014 which include trips to Hong King, Macau and Taiwan.

But a few Chinese tourists abroad have left the officials at home feeling embarrassed. Incidents like drying underwear in an airport, defecating in public and kicking a bell at a temple in Thailand have made Chinese officials thoroughly embarrassed with their own tourists.

Other incidents like opening emergency gates and throwing boiling noodles on cabin crew have all lead to outrage and defamation for China. The 2013 incidents where a tourist wrote his name on ancient carving in Egypt also sparked uproar from all over the world.

A 64 pages “Guidebook for Civilized Tourism” was issued in 2013 for Chinese tourists where simple behavioral guidelines were written for tourists like they should not pick their nose in public, pee in pools or steal airplane life jackets.

Being the biggest spenders, with spending capacity that has exceeded the Germans and the US tourists, Chinese travellers spent $102 billion overseas in 2012 according to a report by UNWTO.