How to avoid being a bad tourist abroad

Photo by Jonathan Borba on Pexels

The sign outside Wat Chedi Luang in Chiang Mai’s old city is polite but unambiguous: shoulders and knees covered, shoes removed before the inner sanctuary. Most visitors comply. But every afternoon, someone walks straight past it — flip-flops still on, bare shoulders, phone raised — and the monk sitting near the entrance looks away with a patience that costs him something. It’s not dramatic. Nobody shouts. The moment passes. But it registers, and it accumulates across thousands of temples and thousands of days.

That’s the thing about bad tourist behaviour: it’s rarely malicious. It’s almost always a failure of attention — not reading the sign, not researching before arriving, not slowing down enough to notice what the place actually requires. The good news is that the remedies are specific and learnable. They’re not about moral purity or performing humility. They’re just about doing the work before and during the trip.

This guide is that work, made practical.

Learn the dress code before you land — and pack accordingly

Dress expectations vary more sharply than most travellers anticipate, and the consequences of ignoring them range from mild embarrassment to being turned away at the entrance to somewhere you’ve travelled a long way to see.

In Morocco’s medinas — Fez, Marrakech, Chefchaoui — women and men both benefit from covering shoulders and upper arms, particularly outside the tourist-concentrated areas around Djemaa el-Fna. The Chouara tannery district in Fez is not a performance put on for visitors; people work there. The same applies to the mosques of Istanbul’s Sultanahmet neighbourhood, where the Blue Mosque provides loaner coverings but the queue to collect them adds 20 minutes to your visit and signals that you didn’t prepare.

In Hindu and Buddhist temple complexes — Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, Pura Besakih in Bali, the Meenakshi Amman Temple in Madurai — the requirements are posted clearly at the gate. A lightweight linen shirt and loose trousers weigh almost nothing and solve the problem entirely. Pack one set specifically for this purpose and you won’t have to think about it again.

The broader principle: before any trip, spend 20 minutes looking up the dress expectations for the specific religious or cultural sites you plan to visit. Government tourism boards and UNESCO site pages are usually accurate. Travel forums are less reliable — they reflect individual experience, which varies.

Understand what your photography actually costs

The instinct to photograph everything is understandable. It’s also, in certain contexts, extractive in ways that are worth examining.

In the markets around San Francisco El Alto in Guatemala’s western highlands — one of the largest indigenous markets in Central America, held on Fridays — vendors have been photographed by tourists for decades without being asked and without benefit. The same is true in the old city of Harar in eastern Ethiopia, in the hill tribe villages of northern Laos, and in the ghats of Varanasi. These are not museum exhibits. They are people’s workplaces, homes, and sacred spaces.

The practical rule is simple: ask before photographing people, and accept a no gracefully. In many places — parts of Bolivia, certain areas of rural India, most of the Middle East — photographing women without permission is considered deeply disrespectful. In others, there’s a transactional norm: a vendor in a market may agree to a photograph if you’ve bought something first, which is a reasonable exchange. The Jemaa el-Fna square in Marrakech has its own informal system: the performers there expect a small payment (5–10 dirham) in exchange for being photographed. Pay it.

What not to do: photograph ceremonies or religious rituals as a form of content capture. If you’re attending a temple festival — the kind described in our guide to attending a local festival in Bali as an outsider — observe what the people around you are doing. If phones are put away, put yours away too.

Know the tipping and bargaining norms — they’re not universal

In Japan, tipping is considered rude. Leave money on the table at a restaurant in Tokyo or Kyoto and the server will likely chase you down the street to return it. The same applies in most of South Korea and in parts of China. Tipping in these contexts doesn’t say “I’m grateful” — it says “I don’t understand where I am.”

Conversely, in the United States, 18–20% is the functional minimum at a sit-down restaurant. In Egypt, a small tip (baksheesh) is expected for almost every small service, from a doorman to someone who shows you to a seat. In Mexico City, tipping at a taquería is appreciated but not obligatory; at a full-service restaurant, 10–15% is standard.

Bargaining follows similar regional logic. In the souks of Marrakech or the night markets of Bangkok’s Chatuchak district, price negotiation is entirely normal — vendors factor it in from the opening figure. In a regular shop in Lisbon or a supermarket anywhere, it is not. The rule of thumb: if there is no price tag, negotiation is probably expected. If there is a price tag, assume it’s fixed unless you’re buying multiple items.

Spend your money where it actually stays

One of the most concrete ways to travel better is to think about where your money goes — not in an abstract sense, but practically, on the ground, each day.

Large international hotel chains, globally owned tour operators, and foreign-run restaurants in tourist hubs tend to extract money from the local economy rather than circulate it within it. The alternative doesn’t require sacrifice. It requires minor research.

Eat at locally owned restaurants rather than the ones that have optimised their signage for tourists. In Tbilisi’s Marjanishvili neighbourhood, a khinkali (Georgian dumpling) at a family-run spot will cost 0.60–0.80 GEL per piece and be made that morning. In Hoi An’s Cẩm Châu district, a bowl of cao lầu — the wheat noodle dish specific to this town, not replicable elsewhere because it uses water from local wells — costs roughly 40,000 VND (about $1.60) at a proper local spot. Both meals are better than their expensive tourist-facing equivalents.

Where you stay matters too. Guesthouses owned by local families keep money in the community in ways that international chains don’t. Community-based tourism — staying with families, eating communal meals, hiring local guides directly rather than through aggregators — is one of the more effective forms of positive economic impact available to travellers.

Hire local guides directly where possible. In most destinations, this isn’t difficult — it just requires asking at the accommodation rather than booking through an international platform. Our guide to finding a good local guide without an agency goes into the specifics of how to do this well.

Learn ten words before you arrive — minimum

This is the simplest thing on this list and one of the least practised. Learning hello, thank you, please, excuse me, and I don’t speak [language] in the local language takes under an hour and changes your interactions entirely. It signals that you recognise you are the guest here.

In Thailand, a softly spoken sawasdee kha (woman) or sawasdee khrap (man) accompanied by a small bow changes the temperature of almost every exchange. In Arabic-speaking countries, shukran (thank you) and min fadlak (please) open doors that a pointed finger doesn’t. In Japan, sumimasen (excuse me / sorry to bother you) is probably the single most useful word a visitor can know; it’s used constantly and correctly.

Learning basic Thai before visiting Thailand is worth reading if Thailand is on your itinerary. The same principle applies everywhere: a small investment in language signals respect and returns it, usually with warmth.

Apps like Duolingo or Pimsleur handle pronunciation adequately for the basics. A notebook of handwritten phrases works too. What doesn’t work is assuming English will cover it and not trying at all — especially outside capital cities.

Understand the weight of your presence in fragile places

Some destinations are under genuine pressure from visitor numbers, and behaving well there means being conscious of that pressure and adjusting accordingly.

Overtourism is not evenly distributed. Machu Picchu now operates a timed entry system and caps daily visitors at around 4,500 across specific circuits. The Venetian island of Burano has around 2,900 residents and, in peak summer months, receives up to 40,000 visitors a day. The Phi Phi Islands in Thailand are slowly recovering from the ecological damage documented after the beach at Maya Bay was closed between 2018 and 2022.

Practical implications: book timed entry well in advance at sites that require it. Stick to designated paths — at Angkor, at Machu Picchu, on the Cinque Terre trail between Vernazza and Corniglia. Don’t touch rock formations, reef coral, or archaeological structures. These are rules, not suggestions, and they exist because the cumulative damage of millions of hands is irreversible.

Choosing when and where to go also matters. Avoiding overtourism in Southeast Asia lays out specific alternatives to the most pressured destinations in the region — useful reading before you finalise an itinerary. The National Geographic Society’s guidelines on sustainable travel offer a broader framework worth reviewing.

Understand that customs aren’t decorative

When you visit someone’s home, you follow their rules — not because you’re obliged to perform deference, but because you’re a guest and that’s what guests do. The same logic applies to cultural practices that may be unfamiliar.

In parts of rural Nepal and India, pointing the soles of your feet at a person or a sacred object is considered disrespectful. Sitting cross-legged on the floor is generally fine; stretching your legs toward the altar or toward an elder is not. In many Islamic countries, using your left hand to pass food or money is considered unclean. In Buddhist temples across Southeast Asia, you don’t stand higher than a monk. In Orthodox Jewish neighbourhoods in Jerusalem, men and women walk on separate paths during Shabbat. None of these are arbitrary hurdles — they carry meaning to the people who live within them.

A quick, specific search — “cultural customs in [destination] for visitors” — on BBC Travel’s etiquette guides or directly through the national tourism board will give you the relevant ones for your destination. Thirty minutes of reading protects you from inadvertent offence and often leads to more genuine interactions.

The Bottom Line

Do the ten-minute research before each major site. Dress codes, photography rules, tipping norms, and entry requirements are all findable before you arrive. Arriving informed is the difference between an easy visit and an awkward one.

Your money is a decision. Eating at local restaurants, staying in locally owned guesthouses, and hiring guides directly rather than through international aggregators keeps more of your spending in the community. It also tends to produce better experiences.

Learn the language basics — even just five words. It costs almost nothing, signals genuine respect, and consistently changes how people respond to you.

Be physically careful in fragile places. Stick to designated paths, book timed entry in advance at sites that require it, and keep your hands off surfaces that can’t recover from millions of hands. Rules at archaeological and ecological sites are structural, not performative.

The goal is attention, not perfection. Nobody expects a visitor to know everything. What registers — to the monk near the entrance, the vendor in the market, the host of the guesthouse — is whether you’re paying attention at all.

Keep reading: How to respectfully visit religious sites abroad