British behaviour in holiday hotel

[Scarfitwere]

We are staying at a good all inclusive resort (yes, I know all inclusive is not high end, but this is about as good a one as you can get). I am just shocked and ashamed at fellow british people at breakfast time. Letting their kids make a huge mess by allowing them to get their own food. Huge amounts of wasted food. Multiple untouched plates left on tables. Total disregard for others barging round, blocking walkways etc. When did this become ok?? AIBU with expectations? Bear in mind this is not a cheap rubbish tui-blue type place. I dread to think what they are like!

Fine unless they are ferrel

Don't know why you're surprised. They act like this at home too.

And that is one of the many, many reasons why I would never go on an all inclusive holiday ever again.
Tried it once, felt like I was in a prison camp with the cast of Shameless.
I saw one bloke load 5 dinner plates up with fries and then comment to someone “gotta get yet moneys worth”. The gluttony is repulsive.

No I don't think it's lazy in itself, with plenty of caveats, as I said - parents need to make sure they're doing it properly.

Children like the freedom and autonomy of choosing and serving their own food. I have always told mine that they can have that freedom as long as I can trust them to do it sensibly. As soon as I can't trust them, the freedom goes away. As I said, I care that they do it properly.

From the age of about 3 my kids could choose their own things in packets, like sachets of sauce, packets of Weetabix, the little tubs of ice cream etc. Maybe at about 4 they'd start to use tongs to get croissants or fruit. My now 8 year old serves herself everything, including hot food. I always make sure to sit at a table where she's always in my eye line, and I go and help if she needs it.

I don't know what part of all that is lazy tbh - all in all it's probably harder than just doing it for them!

😂😂

@Scarfitwere YANBU!! I'd be mortified to be English!

This is why I stay in a half board hotel that will be mostly foreign people there and just a handful of "well trained" English! The uncouth don't tend to bother with places where they don't speak English and serve "foreign stuff" to eat! My kids are well trained and polite!

I'm a teacher in a state secondary school and I really think we need to go back to basics with parenting, and give parents a guide book on how to raise a child!! We took a Y7 residential trip with 100 kids, and the amount of kids who can't use a knife and fork, don't sit at a table to eat, take more food than they intend to eat etc... is shocking. We also banned phones, and the kids didn't know how to socialise. By the end of the week, they were finally having a laugh about the stuff they'd done all week rather than talking about what someone else had done on TikTok.

Regardless what you paid for your hotel children shouldn't be running riot in a reasturant people will say of "not my kid" but it usually is, it takes minutes to go up with your child to pick food, i like children i think they should have nice holidays but not touching the food they pick things up put it back etc etc, and ime it is brittish children not all of course but majority of.

I've stayed in some very nice 4+ & 5 star Tui hotels, so yabu to be so snobby about them.
It's not just British people who are rude, other nationalities are too.
Went on an Msc cruise a couple of years ago. There were people who are not British jumping the queue and would practically elbow you in the face to get the last pancake!

I probably have less patience with Brits abroad than most but I would not lose any sleep over this. kids getting in the way and food wastage is part of what happens on all inclusives. It's nothing to get worked up about.

Obviously you are unreasonable. Unreasonable for referring to Tui hotels as cheap rubbish when you know full well that not only is that the norm for a holiday for many people, but also it’s an aspiration many more people are unable to afford. Doesn’t make you look good (and if you weren’t aware of that you are either thick or your privilege is unbelievable)

And agree - if it’s only British families behaving badly then I can’t think that there are many other nationalities there.

Not all hotels are like this and it's not always Brits. But I have stayed in a cheap AI in Lanzarote once where I did see the behaviour you've described and it was all Brits too. Basically, the adults getting drunk already at breakfast, kids running feral eating pick and mix and running around the hotel complex discarding hot dogs all over the place. It was grim. Most other AI's I've been to have been much nicer. I tend to read the trip advisor reviews very carefully and avoid anywhere with a hint of Brits abroad .....people moaning about watered down AI cocktails etc is often a clue.

I think you'd always expect a bit of eyes bigger than belly behaviour and some wasted food from children and adults in AI. Depends how it is set up really. At Club Med we quickly learned that you can take small plates and have several small things as you fancy, so no need for waste. At the other end of the scale, when DH and I we were younger and went on a cheap AI in Turkey and you were in a queue with the two of us and 200 German pensioners who had probably reserved their queue position with a towel at 4am, and you'd want to pile your plate up while you could and not risk a return visit. If people have previously experienced big queues they may need time to adjust.

We've stopped going to all inclusive, mainly because of the chaos and unpleasantness of the canteens (they are not restaurants). We have a fairly relaxed attitude to meal times when on holiday, but there do still have to be some base rules of good manners and found other people are quite happy to let their kids run feral, which in turn our young child wants to do so we only do self catering now. The noise inside those canteens is unbearable with all the screaming and shouting, which just gets worse with the busier it gets and more booze piled on top so the parents give even less shits about what their kids are up to. But the secondary reason is how disgusting grown adults feel it's ok to behave. Allowing kids to drop piles of food on the floor and then just leave it there. Barging around to grab bits of food then putting it back and touching everything around.

I have no issue with the concept of AI, unfortunately you can't control how other people behave.

The nicest places are often a good mixture of nationalities. There can be a problem when one group dominates.

Honestly I don’t think it’s the price of the resort that’s the problem. I’ve stayed in AI hotels in Benidorm and the mams (and dads) are on it helping their kids. You sound like a frightful snob.

Funny isnt it how people are only allowed to criticise the British, well specifically English. Call out any other nationality and you are immediately slammed as being racist. I find the French particularly obnoxious but just give them a wide berth.
Despite the fact everyone seems to hate British people, including our current government, every fucker and his dog wants to be here!!

This behaviour is universal. I’ve never had an AI holiday in my life but I’ve seen plenty of it.

Nothing, as long as they only take what they’re going to eat, and don’t make a mess with it!

Oh you might have been in the same Lanzarote hotel as me! ! We are not English so didn't realise it was English half term it was an eye opener 😳

In my experience British people are not as you describe.

I agree with the sentiment here, there is a perception amongst some families that if it's all been paid for then it doesn't need treating with respect.

The food uneaten/touched could have been enjoyed by someone else, any mess made makes life more difficult for the workers at the hotel. It's just common courtesy.

It's not the type of holiday that's the issue, it's the mindset of what you hope would be the minority which makes things worse for the majority.

This^ I’ve saved for 2 years to take my kids away and this is what we are going to.

Having money doesn’t mean you have good manners and vice versa.

Never done AI and never will. We have done cheaper holidays but never all-inclusive because of this uncivilised behaviour. No thanks.

I can’t help remembering a very nice hotel in Prague, where two well dressed and affluent looking couples at a nearby table were taking a mass of food from the extensive breakfast buffet, and surreptitiously slipping it into bags - while looking around to make sure no staff were watching. Fruit, yogurts, rolls that they’d just filled with ham or cheese, croissants, you name it.

And no, they weren’t Brits! I couldn’t definitely make out the language, but it certainly wasn’t English or French.

And shortly before the Brexit referendum, we were staying with dd, SiL, and baby Gdd at a very nice, family-friendly beach hotel in Crete. The manager told us he was very concerned that if we voted to leave the EU, his British guests would stop coming, since in his opinion they were usually the best behaved - and gave staff the least trouble.

And I’ve certainly heard of at least one hotel in Greece where they stopped providing buffet meals, because guests of a certain nationality (not Brits) were routinely taking a mass of food that they then left uneaten - to be thrown away.