Still, one would like to hope that people wouldn’t, for example, deface temple walls at home, or spend a drunken night at their country’s most famous landmark. It is borne out in statistics that people feel liberated on their travels, and so indulge in ways they might not in “ordinary” life. That used to mean eating an extra slice of dessert, or taking a longer shower. Now, though, it seems to extend to a lack of etiquette, too. 

“You don’t really have a connection to the local culture or local people,” she says. “So your actions seemingly have no consequences – you’re in vacation-land, where you can be whoever you want. Now, it seems to be impacting behaviour, and it’s just a natural iteration of this urge.”

This seems to chime with other moments of impropriety we witnessed this year. There was the brief, strange craze of fans throwing objects at singers during concert performances, which reached its zenith when popstar Pink was handed a carrier bag of ashes at a show in London. And then there was the seemingly endless scourge of people playing music out of their phones on public transport – without an earphone in sight. Could this be explained away as some post-pandemic liberation?

Studies do show that incivility has risen in recent years – but they also show that travellers are booking trips on the basis of experiences, rather than destination. That means an Instagram-worthy night out is more important than, say, a peaceful afternoon at the beach. It’s not new, but the prospect of virality means that travellers are going to extreme lengths to “prove” they are having a good time.

There’s a sense that this is self-perpetuating. It could be the case that we are seeing this behaviour more often, as the ability for distribution rises. While this year felt particularly bad, the chaos isn’t entirely new. In 2022, a Saudi engineer was charged after driving his Maserati down the Spanish Steps in Rome. Three years earlier, there was uproar as a group of Australians ran naked down a street in Bali. All this seems to demonstrate is that the pandemic paused our slide into impoliteness, rather than created it. 

Destinations are, naturally, having to respond. Photography has been banned in the geisha district of Kyoto, because, as Dr Seigel says, “property was getting destroyed as people were just chasing down geishas to take photos with them.” There’s now a ¥10,000 (£55) fine for anyone taking photos without a permit. 

“This sort of thing is a start,” says Dr Seigel. “It might be the case where it does sort of need to get worse before it can get better.” Initiatives that encourage people to behave respectfully – posters on the walls of temples; stricter booking criteria – will hopefully encourage people to reflect on their behaviour. For historic sites and natural landscapes, it seems like a logical, if infantilising, way to encourage respect. How airlines prevent all the bodily fluids, though, remains to be seen.