This post is adapted from GetYourGuide, a Priceonomics Data Studio customer. Does your company have interesting data? Become a Priceonomics customer.
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Are tourists from some countries meaner, ruder, and more negative than others?
It’s a difficult question to answer, but we decided to use online data to try to figure out the answer. We analyzed data from GetYourGuide, a Priceonomics customer that offers 26,000 international activities and tours that receive reviews from people all over the world.
Do travelers from certain countries tend to leave more scathing reviews? Are residents of certain parts of the world more generous with their 4 or 5-star ratings? Who are the most and least happiest travelers?
Analyzing data from the top 50 countries in terms of the available data, we found that South Koreans left the most critical and scathing reviews. The happiest and most generous reviews came from the Czech Republic.
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All of the reviews we compiled were based on a 1 to 5-star scale (1-star = terrible; 5 = excellent). For our analysis, we defined “happy” as those who left the highest percentage of 4 and 5-star reviews, and we defined “unhappy” as those more critical reviewers who left the highest percentage of 1 and 2-star reviews.
Here’s how travelers from the United States measured up:
Just 11% of Americans gave negative (1 and 2-star) reviews. So how does that stack up against countries that give the worst reviews? And which countries are home to the unhappiest, most critical customers?
Data source: GetYourGuide
Surprisingly, 18.5% of all reviews left by South Koreans are either 1-star or 2-star ratings. The country also maintains the highest percentage of 3-star reviews, at 27%. Asian countries make a formidable showing on this disapproving list: people from Malaysia, Hong Kong and China are critical of their experiences too.
Spanish-speaking countries also give lots of low ratings: Mexicans, Colombians, Peruvians and Argentinians all leave relatively high percentages of poor reviews.
The good news? If you look at the breakdown of the reviews, you’ll notice that the overwhelming majority are still positive — and remember, these are the unhappy, more critical countries.
So, where do the happiest travelers come from?
Data source: GetYourGuide
Czech travelers are particularly happy: 92.3% of all reviews were a 4 or 5-star review. People from Russia and Poland trail closely behind — though the distribution of 4 and 5-star reviews varies.
An astonishing 71% of Austrians leave 5-star reviews, compared with Norway’s 45%. But a much higher percentage of Norwegians leave 4-star reviews than Austrians do.
Notably, all ten of the nicest countries are in Europe.
Are all European tourists so agreeable? We pulled out our data for 25 European countries and ranked them by the difference between happy and unhappy review rates, which we call “net happiness.”
Data source: GetYourGuide
Here we see that not all Europeans are so positive. Among Europeans, Turkish people leave the highest percentage of negative reviews and have the lowest percentage of positive reviews — for a net happiness of 63.1%. And their neighbors, Greece, are similarly low at 69.2%.
The top countries in Europe by net happiness are similar to the overall happiness ranking, with the Czech Republic, Russia, and Poland taking the top three spots. With only a 4.6% negative review rate, Russians are the least critical country. Travelers in the Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden, and Finland tend to give fewer 5-star ratings and more 4-star ratings, as do people from the Netherlands.
Of course this data only represents reviews from GetYourGuide — and this is only a portion of all online reviews. Highly critical reviewers are not exclusive to any single region.
Still, while the overwhelming majority of customers leave positive reviews, some countries do tend to be more critical than others.
Note: If you’re a company that wants to work with Priceonomics to turn your data into great stories, learn more about the Priceonomics Data Studio.