Travel Customs
Last updated: 6 August 2026
Reviewed by Gavin Meiring, Lead research and primary author · Doctoral Candidate (Corporate Governance) · Research and drafting assisted by AI
- In Japan, bowing (ojigi) is the standard greeting — the lower and longer the bow, the greater the respect shown — and tipping is not practiced; service is included in the price, and leaving a tip can cause confusion or even be seen as insulting.
- In Thailand, the traditional greeting is the 'wai': palms pressed together at chest level with a slight bow — the younger or lower-status person initiates it, and while visitors should return a wai, they should not initiate one toward children or service staff.
- Across much of the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa, the left hand is considered unclean: eat, pass objects and shake hands with the right hand only, and avoid pointing the soles of your feet at anyone.
Travel Customs Guide
What is polite in one country can be deeply offensive in another. Gestures, dining behaviour, gift-giving, greetings, and dress codes all carry cultural weight that varies dramatically around the world. This guide provides country-specific customs and etiquette so you can travel with confidence and avoid unintentional offence.
How to Use the Travel Customs Guide
- Select your destination country from the dropdown menu.
- Browse customs by category: greetings, dining, dress, gift-giving, tipping, and taboos.
- Use the comparison view to contrast customs between your home country and destination.
- Save or print the summary card to review before and during your trip.
- Check the legal notices section for rules that carry genuine penalties in your destination.
The Formula
Understanding travel customs involves knowing three layers of a culture. Surface customs are the visible behaviours: how people greet each other, what they wear to a place of worship, whether they remove shoes indoors. Deep customs reflect underlying values: collectivism vs. individualism, face-saving vs. directness, formality vs. informality. Legal rules are customs that have been codified into law, such as dress requirements in religious sites, restrictions on photography, alcohol laws, and rules about public displays of affection.
The key method is to research before travel, observe on arrival, and default to the more conservative or formal behaviour when uncertain. Locals in tourist-heavy areas are often forgiving of inadvertent errors, but genuine effort to respect local customs is universally appreciated.
Real-World Example
Visiting Japan for the first time.
Greetings: bow rather than shake hands; a 15-degree bow is a polite standard greeting for strangers. Shoes: remove shoes when entering a home (a traditional restaurant, or any space with tatami mats). A rack of shoes near the entrance signals that removal is expected. Dining: never stick chopsticks upright in a bowl of rice (this resembles incense sticks at a funeral, a death symbol). Do not pass food chopstick to chopstick. It is perfectly acceptable to slurp noodles. Tipping: tipping is not practised and can be considered offensive; good service is expected as standard. Gifts: bring a gift when visiting someone's home; wrap it neatly, as presentation matters. The recipient may not open it immediately, which is not rudeness but a cultural norm.
Key Customs Themes by Region
East Asia (Japan, China, South Korea): face-saving comes first; avoid causing embarrassment publicly. Accepting and giving items with two hands is respectful. Direct refusal is often avoided; ambiguous answers may mean no. Middle East (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iran): dress modestly; head coverings required in many religious sites; alcohol laws vary from strict prohibition to licensed venues only; public displays of affection are restricted. South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh): remove shoes at temples and mosques; the left hand is considered unclean; cows are sacred in Hindu-majority areas. Western Europe: relatively informal by global standards but formal in business settings; punctuality expectations vary significantly from northern to southern countries. Africa: greetings are important and often lengthy; rushing a greeting is impolite; hospitality is central to many cultures.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the most common mistake tourists make abroad? Assuming their home country's norms apply everywhere. Specific pitfalls include tipping in no-tipping cultures (Japan), not tipping in tipping cultures (US), ignoring dress codes at religious sites, and using the left hand for eating or giving gifts in cultures where it is considered unclean.
How should I handle religious site visits? Research the specific site's requirements before visiting. Mosques, temples, churches, and synagogues each have their own standards. Common expectations include removing shoes, covering the head, dressing modestly (covering shoulders and knees at minimum), speaking quietly, and not photographing worshippers or interiors without permission. Having a scarf or lightweight trousers in your bag as a backup is practical preparation.
Are there customs around photographing people in other countries? Always ask permission before photographing individuals, particularly in cultures where photography of women or local people is sensitive. In some countries, photographing military installations, government buildings, or border areas is illegal and can result in detention. In tourist areas, some local people in traditional dress will expect payment for photographs.
What should I know about tipping customs around the world? Tipping is expected and essential for service workers' income in the US (15-20%). It is common but not obligatory in the UK and Western Europe (10-15% in restaurants). Tipping is unusual or offensive in Japan, South Korea, and parts of China. In much of Southeast Asia, small tips are appreciated but not expected. In the Middle East, 10-15% is common in international restaurants. Research your specific destination as customs vary even within countries.
What the guide covers and how to search it
The page above the search box is a list of 40 countries. Each entry names one mistake that visitors make and explains the convention behind it. The search box matches any text in the country name, the mistake and the explanation, so a search for "left hand" returns India and Nigeria, and a search for "shoes" returns Turkey, Malaysia, Poland and Canada, four entries where the same physical habit carries different weight.
| Search term | Entries returned |
|---|---|
| tipping | 7 (Japan, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, USA, Canada, Australia) |
| shoes | 4 (Turkey, Malaysia, Poland, Canada) |
| tea | 5 (Greece, Mexico, Philippines, Morocco, Kenya) |
| head | 4 (Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam, Bulgaria) |
| mosque | 2 (Turkey, Malaysia) |
| ramadan | 1 (UAE) |
The counts are what the list returns, not a ranking of how serious each point is. A term such as "tipping" reaches seven entries because money and service sit at the front of most travel writing, while "ramadan" reaches one because a single entry covers a rule that applies in several countries.
The tipping entries side by side
Tipping is the topic the list covers most often, and the seven entries disagree with each other in a useful way. Read as a set, they show that the question is not how much to leave but whether the wage system expects anything at all.
| Country | What the entry says |
|---|---|
| Japan | Tipping is considered rude. Leave no tip in restaurants, taxis or hotels |
| USA | 15 to 20 percent in sit-down restaurants, with a dollar or two per drink |
| Canada | 15 to 18 percent expected at restaurants |
| Australia | No tipping culture. Hospitality workers earn proper wages, so rounding up is fine |
| Spain | Tipping is not expected. Rounding up the bill is plenty |
| Portugal | Tipping is not expected beyond rounding up |
| Switzerland | Tipping is not expected, because service is included |
The two ways to get this wrong are opposite, and the entry list is built to catch both. Leaving nothing in a country where the wage depends on tips takes money out of the pocket of the person serving you. Leaving a note on the table in a country where the gesture marks the server as underpaid makes the same point in reverse. In both cases the answer is to check the local convention rather than to apply the habit you brought with you, which is the whole reason a page like this exists.
Where to check the rules before you travel
A list of common mistakes answers the question "what do people get wrong here". It does not answer "what does the law say". Those are different questions with different sources.
The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office publishes a page for every country at gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice. Each page carries the same six sections: Warnings and insurance, Entry requirements, Safety and security, Regional risks, Health, and Getting help. The Morocco page, read on 14 September 2026, showed "Still current at: 14 September 2026" at the top, which is the date the advice was last checked. Local laws and customs sit inside the Safety and security section rather than in a section of their own.
Three habits make that source worth the two minutes it takes.
- Read the date at the top. Advice pages are reviewed continuously, and a page carrying an old check date may describe a rule that has since changed.
- Subscribe to the email alerts on the page you are reading. The change you need is often announced in a paragraph rather than in the headline of the page.
- Read the section that names the risk you are least likely to meet. Travellers read health advice and skip the paragraphs about public behaviour, and the second is where penalties usually sit.
A worked example on one trip
Take a week in Morocco. The entries above give two surface customs: mint tea arrives as three glasses and the first is often the strongest, and everything is taken and passed with the right hand. Those are the visible behaviours.
The layer underneath is what the behaviours mean. Accepting the first glass answers an offer of hospitality, and the right hand carries the convention that the left hand is reserved for tasks the entry describes as unclean. Both layers reward the same habit: accept what is offered, and use one hand deliberately rather than casually.
The third layer is legal. Alcohol availability, dress in religious sites, photography of people and of official buildings, and public behaviour during Ramadan all sit in law as well as custom. The UAE entry in the list states the Ramadan position plainly: eating, drinking or smoking in public during daylight hours is illegal and deeply offensive, and it applies to non-Muslims as well. Customs are enforced by disapproval. Legal rules are enforced by officials, which is why the government advice page, not this list, is the source for that layer.
How to use an entry without over-generalising
Four limits are worth holding in mind.
- A country is not one culture. A business hotel in a capital city, a coastal resort and a rural village follow different norms, and the entry describes one convention rather than all of them.
- The list has one entry per country, so it can only flag a topic. Absence from the list is not evidence that a topic does not matter.
- Customs shift with generation, religion, region and setting. Treat each entry as a question to check rather than a rule to apply everywhere in the country.
- When two behaviours are plausible and you cannot tell which fits, choose the more formal one. The cost of being slightly stiff is small, and the cost of the other choice is not.
The source behind the dates
The government-advice structure and check date quoted above come from the FCDO travel advice pages at gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice, and specifically from the Morocco page as read on 14 September 2026. The country entries and their wording belong to this page's own list.
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