What it means: It's the time of the year when people start thinking about their summer holidays. There are some factors to be taken into consideration when planning holidays – weather, price, safety – but the most important one is, what will impress your friends and colleagues back home?
Egotourists choose destinations not for cultural or environmental reasons, but simply to make themselves feel more important. Forget Lanzarote: kayaking up the Amazon to bring a vital vaccine to an endangered tribe, or leading a safari to save the rhino from extinction, will give you bragging rights at dinner parties for the rest of the year.
Where it comes from: Last month, Lonely Planet writer Andy Murdock came up with "30 travel terms that don't exist but should". They included "frankophile" (a person who likes to get their passports stamped) and "globetrots" (round-the-world traveller's diarrhoea), but "egotourist" wins by an airmile because we've all had to endure their self-serving travel tales.
How to say it:"We've got a right ego-tourist here – wants a list of our destinations that have recently been hit by earthquakes, tsunamis or asteroids."
