Holidays hardly make a big impression on tourists from a geographic point of view, according to a survey.

As many as 51 per cent of UK holidaymakers failed to point their last holiday destination out on a map, the poll by travel agent www.sunshine.co.uk found.

And 19 per cent even got the continent wrong when asked to explain just where they had taken their last overseas break. Eight respondents who went to Spain thought, mapwise, they had travelled to a spot close to the United States, while 27 who had gone to Mexico reckoned they had travelled to a location close to the east coast of America.

Despite the discrepancies, as many as 69 per cent of the 1,821 people polled rated their geographical knowledge as “very good”.

More than two in five said there were certain places in the world that did not interest them.

Sunshine.co.uk co-founder Chris Brown said: “If people haven’t done geography since their school days, it’s easy to see why there might be a certain amount of confusion when it comes to where things are in the world.

“However, I’d like to think people could still point out major countries on a world map.

“It’s slightly worrying that a lot of people don’t know where they are in the world when they go on holiday, said Tomoaki Iwai,politics professor at Nihon University.