How did the swim brief fair in TripAdvisor’s and Expedia’s Surveys?
I’ve been looking for some good resources on the acceptance of male swim bikinis at the beach and I’ve found a couple surveys that I think are fairly reliable. They are TripAdvisor’s Beach and Pool Etiquette Survey and Expedia’s Flip Flop Report. I’ve found 3 years of surveys for 2010, 2011, and 2012 for TripAdvisor and Expedia’s 2013 survey. The TripAdvisor Surveys surveyed US travelers only, but the 2012 didn’t have anything about swim briefs, but I came across one done with Australian travelers. Expedia’s survey is a worldwide one. They did survey about other things in these surveys that you can check out in the links at the end of the post, but I’m focusing on the swim bikini or Speedo of course for this post.
In TripAdvisor’s 2010 survey, they surveyed more than 2000 US travelers. And the verdict for swim briefs was “35 percent think it’s a violation of beach and pool etiquette for men to wear speedos, while 29 percent think the same of women clad in skimpy bikinis.” So 65 percent must think it is okay for men to wear swim briefs, plus it is only 6 percentage points less than the percentage for women in skimpy bikinis. So I take that as a positive for the swim brief. In the following year survey (2011), it changes slightly by 1 percentage point to 66 percent think it is okay for men to wear swim briefs, but women got a 4% increase in approval out of the more than 1,100 US travelers surveyed. TripAdvisor’s 2012 survey didn’t have the results for the swim briefs for the US travelers surveyed. Based on the Australian travelers surveyed, where more than 2,700 travelers were surveyed it was even more positive though it says small tight swim shorts in the results. For men the results came in at 73% and for the women it was 78%. So swim briefs or at least tighter swimsuits looks to be more acceptable in Australia.
With the 2013 Expedia Flip Flop survey we get more of a look around the world of the swim brief acceptance. They surveyed slightly over 8,600 people among beach travelers in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Overall it was a positive for the verdict for the swim brief with 65 percent of respondents giving an acceptable rating to them. The most acceptable countries were France at 91% and Italy at 87%. The least acceptable countries were Japan at 29% and the Norway at 34%. For the US it was lower than the TripAdvisor surveys with a disappointing 52% approval rating. At least it was still more than half.
Statistically I don’t know what a good polling sample is, but at least we can get a picture of what some people think about men wearing swim briefs. I take from it as a mostly positive verdict, but of course it will be up to where you live how positive people are. Though if it is acceptable for women to wear bikinis there then it should be acceptable for guys, but that doesn’t stop other people from thinking or voicing a different opinion. Anyone else come across any good polls on the subject?
TripAdvisors Surveys: 2010, 2011, 2012 (US), 2012 (AU)
Expedia Survey: 2013
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