Sunday is World Tourism Day, when the United Nations World Tourism Organization celebrates the best of tourism: the cultural exchanges, the economic stimulus and the new perspectives one can gain after visiting an area.
But the word "tourist" gets a bad rap, and for good reason: There are almost daily incidents of tourists behaving badly, of selfie-stick-toting people ruining things for everyone else, and visitors destroying the very thing they came to a place to see.
This is how some of the world's worst tourists are making headlines and eye rolls:
Breaking everything
Many artifacts survive hundreds of years, arriving to a museum in near pristine condition. But give a tourist a few minutes and watch history crumble.
In the past few years, a man broke a 600-year-old statue’s finger while trying to measure it, two men broke a statue after climbing on top of it to take a selfie in Italy, and one man decided to break off a souvenir from one of the heads at Easter Island.
When Selfies Go Wrong... Centuries Old Italian Statue Broken by Tourists http://t.co/XIkcgUAMMa #photography #selfie pic.twitter.com/yAG607gcsM— Toronto Photographic (@TO_Photographic) May 7, 2015
And that's not even counting the pieces in museums that are slowly being destroyed just by tourists looking at them.
Leaving their mark
You know when you're walking around a beautiful, historical site and you can't stop marveling at the fact that this was made hundreds -- if not thousands -- of years ago, and all of a sudden you feel the irrepressible urge to leave your initials on a wall?
Because that seems to happen to a lot of people.
Che schifo! House of Juliet in Verona is under siege with tourist lovers' graffiti on the walls outside. Don't do it pic.twitter.com/sSvaFGug5e— MondoTwisto (@MondoTwisto) August 16, 2014
Tourists have left their mark on ancient Egyptian temples, at the Colosseum and even on bunks at Auschwitz.
"Love locks" have become a scourge in several cities -- most notably Paris -- because tourists have felt the need to prove their relationship by attaching a hunk of metal to a bridge.
Hurting animals
Most people love animals. Some tourists love them to death.
There was the family that only wanted to love a manatee, but ended up getting arrested for harassing it. Or the family that found an incredibly rare six-legged octopus while on vacation in Greece -- and decided to eat it.
There are species dying out on the Galapagos Islands that can’t compete with the changes to their ecosystem brought by tourists.
And then there's Cecil the Lion.
Getting naked
For some reason beyond explanation, tourists can’t stop stripping down at places of historical import.
From Ankgor Wat to Machu Picchu, tourists are marking their bucket list trips in their birthday suits.
Tourists keep getting #naked at Angkor Wat in #Cambodia http://t.co/EGQ6NnTdnF— Southeast Asia News (@southeastasia4u) February 10, 2015
And then there was that one time Russian tourists decided to film a porno at the pyramids of Egypt.
Getting drunk
It's no surprise that many people drink a bit more than usual while on vacation -- however these tourists take it too far.
While in Australia, two British tourists drunkenly snuck into SeaWorld to swim with dolphins and woke up the next morning to discover that they stole a penguin.
In Bordeaux, France, five young guys out on the town stumbled upon a circus, where they decided to steal a llama and bring him on the tram. Serge, the llama in question, followed the boys around "like a dog on a leash," before getting kicked off the tram and launched into internet stardom.
Drunken, naked tourists have even inspired organized resistance -- at least in Barcelona, which has had enough with out-of-town visitors.
#Barcelona Residents Are Fighting Back Against Drunk, Naked Tourists (via @vice) http://t.co/n4RV5KRX0d pic.twitter.com/c00JaK3oNh— BLOC Hotel - Gatwick (@BLOCHotelLGW) June 12, 2015
This World Tourism Day, do the world a favor, and pledge not to join the ranks of the tourists who make our whole species look bad.