Marketing & Growth

Some Brands Are Too Big to Hate

Every year, a handful of Japanese tourists arrive in Paris and have psychiatric breakdowns. Hallucinations. Anxiety attacks. Feelings of

By Conor Healy

May 8, 2026

Every year, a handful of Japanese tourists arrive in Paris and have psychiatric breakdowns. Hallucinations. Anxiety attacks. Feelings of persecution. Some require hospitalisation. A few need medical escorts to fly them home.

The condition is called Paris Syndrome. It was first documented in the 1980s by Hiroaki Ota, a Japanese psychiatrist working at Sainte-Anne Hospital in Paris. The diagnosis: severe culture shock triggered by the gap between the Paris tourists expected and the Paris they found.

The Paris in their heads was a city of romance, fashion, and beauty. The Paris under their feet was dirty, crowded, and rude. The servers were dismissive. The pickpockets were aggressive. The streets smelled like cigarettes. For some visitors, the dissonance was too much.

Paris Syndrome is what happens when your brand dramatically exceeds your product. It is also, statistically, irrelevant.

50 Million Visitors, 20 Breakdowns

In 2024, Paris welcomed nearly 49 million visitors and generated €71 billion in tourism revenue. In 2025, the city is expected to surpass 50 million visitors for the first time. Paris Syndrome affects roughly 20 Japanese tourists per year out of 1.3 million.

Rough Guides ranked Paris the unfriendliest city in the world. The streets are littered. The metro is crowded. Safety scores low on tourism surveys. None of it matters. Paris remains the most visited city in Europe and one of the most visited on earth.

The brand is stronger than the product. The product is still good enough.

Ryanair: 200 Million Passengers, 87 Complaints Per Thousand

If Paris is the city version of this paradox, Ryanair is the corporate one.

In its 2025 fiscal year, Ryanair carried 200 million passengers, a record, while posting €1.61 billion in profit. It is the largest airline in Europe by passenger volume. It is also, by most measures, the most hated.

Ryanair generates 87 complaints per 1,000 passengers. Premium airlines average 12. An academic paper published in 2024 was titled, without irony, “The Ryanair Paradox: Europe’s Biggest and Most Profitable Airline That Everyone Hates.”

CEO Michael O’Leary has made the hatred part of the brand. “We charge for everything,” he has said. “Checked bags. Coffee. Tea. We’re going to charge for toilet paper next.” When he called Hungarian government ministers “Dumb and Dumber” in 2024, the story trended for three days. Free publicity.

Ryanair’s business model depends on being hated for the right reasons. Passengers complain about fees, discomfort, and inconvenience. They do not complain about price. And in a price-sensitive market, that trade-off works. The base fare is the loss leader. Everything else is margin.

The Airline Industry Made $36 Billion in 2025

Ryanair is an extreme case, but the pattern holds across the industry.

In 2025, global airlines are projected to generate $979 billion in revenue, a record, and $36 billion in net profit. The industry consistently ranks among the most disliked by consumers. Delays. Cancellations. Overbooking. Shrinking seats. Hidden fees. The complaints are endless.

The customers keep flying.

Air travel is structurally necessary. There is no substitute for getting from London to New York in seven hours. As long as airlines remain the only option for long-distance speed, they can absorb enormous amounts of dissatisfaction without losing demand. The product is irreplaceable. The brand is secondary.

When Hatred Becomes Churn

Not every hated brand survives.

Spirit Airlines ranked last in the 2025 Axios Harris Poll of corporate reputation, below X, Meta, and the Trump Organization. Unlike Ryanair, Spirit’s hatred translated to financial collapse. The airline filed for bankruptcy twice, saw merger attempts blocked, and posted a $1.2 billion loss in 2024.

The difference: Ryanair is the cheapest option in a market where price is the primary decision factor. Spirit competed on price in a market where it was not always cheapest, and where competitors like Southwest offered comparable fares with better reputations.

Hatred is survivable when you are either irreplaceable or the best value. Hatred is fatal when you are neither.

The Structure of Invincibility

The brands that survive being hated share common traits.

They are structurally necessary. Airlines move people across oceans. Paris is Paris. Comcast provides internet in areas where it is the only provider. Cable companies have ranked among the most hated businesses in America for two decades. Comcast was named the worst company in America by Consumerist in 2010 and again in 2014. It remains the largest cable provider in the country.

They own the category’s core value proposition. Ryanair is the cheapest way to fly in Europe. That single attribute overrides everything else. Paris is the city of art, history, and romance. The Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Seine. No other city can claim that specific combination. The brand is built on something competitors cannot replicate.

They price below the threshold of switching. Ryanair’s fares are often half what competitors charge. At that price differential, discomfort is tolerable. Paris is expensive, but so is every other major European capital. There is no cheaper alternative that offers the same experience.

What Paris Syndrome Actually Teaches

Paris Syndrome is not a cautionary tale about overpromising. It is evidence that overpromising can work indefinitely, as long as the core product delivers on what matters most.

Japanese tourists visit Paris for the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the patisseries, and the romance of walking along the Seine. Those things exist. They are real. The rude servers and dirty streets are disappointments, not betrayals. The experience is worse than expected but still worth having.

The 20 tourists per year who have breakdowns are not representative. They are outliers with pre-existing vulnerabilities, colliding with jet lag and culture shock. The other 1,299,980 Japanese visitors go home and tell their friends to visit Paris.

The Lesson for Anyone Building a Brand

Your brand can exceed your product, as long as your product delivers on the core promise.

Ryanair promises cheap flights. It delivers cheap flights. Everything else is negotiable.

Paris promises romance, history, and beauty. It delivers romance, history, and beauty. The service and cleanliness are secondary.

The danger is promising something the product cannot deliver at all. Spirit Airlines promised low prices but could not consistently be the cheapest. It also could not deliver reliability, comfort, or service. It promised nothing and delivered less.

If you are going to be hated, be hated for the right reasons. Hated for charging fees on a flight that costs half what competitors charge. Be hated for rude service in a city with the world’s greatest art museums. Be hated for something that customers will tolerate because the alternative is worse.

Paris has been disappointing tourists for centuries. Fifty million of them are coming back this year.