Marina Fanouraki is an unlikely Greek heroine. In the early hours of Tuesday, in the Electra bar on the island of Crete, the 26-year-old is said to have doused a drunken British plumber with sambuca and set him alight. She then calmly gave herself up to police. She claims that 23-year-old Stuart Feltham groped her, exposed himself and demanded sex.

He denies her allegations. But in the eyes of many Greeks and regardless of the facts, Fanouraki is being hailed for her actions. The story has made headlines across the country with sympathetic editorials praising the "gutsy" Cretan.

"She is seen as a modern-day hero," said Theordoros Pakos, a senior police officer on Crete. "A lot of people here are really tired of the way drunken Englishmen comport themselves."

The bar where the events took place is in Malia, a resort that has become notorious for the bad behaviour of tourists. Locals are increasingly exasperated, not least at the sight of couples copulating in public. Internet chat rooms and British party sites publicising "all-night" orgies have fanned the unruly behaviour in the resort. Residents have repeatedly taken to the streets to demand that Britons "stay away" and last week a shop owner in Malia meted out his own brand of justice by holding hostage for an entire day a tourist who had driven into his shop on a quad bike.

Crete is not the only island to be suffering from the bacchanalian excesses of British holidaymakers. Zakynthos used to be known as the Venice of the East. But this year, the summer had barely begun before officials were on the brink of despair.

"We don't understand it," said Dionysios Komniotis, mayor of Laganas, Zakynthos's notorious 'anything goes' resort. "They roll off the plane drunk and then proceed to drink from morning to night. They don't seem to want to enjoy our island, our culture, our hospitality. All they want to do is create trouble."

This year, mayors, police and tourism officials have openly blamed tour operators for the cycle of violence and even death that have come to be associated with the debauchery.

"The operators have threatened us quite openly, saying, 'If you don't like this, if you don't want to put up with it, we'll pull out,' said Komniotis, whose own town, Laganas, looks more like a set from Blade Runner than a quaint fishing village at night.

Even worse, he said, some of Britain's biggest travel companies were not only "blackmailing" the local tourist industry but encouraging the wild inebriation of their clientele.

"This year we have stood our ground. We have told the operators straight, that we are not interested in such tourism," he said. "What is going on is unacceptable. Often tour company reps will encourage youngsters to drink as many drinks as they can on pub crawls because they are working to commission."

Ninety per cent of the three million British holidaymakers who visit Greece each year come on package tours.

Last summer, nine women on one tour were brought before a public prosecutor on Zakynthos after being accused of gross public indecency for allegedly participating in an oral sex "bonanza" on the island. The competition, held on a sandy beach, was allegedly organised by reps although this was fiercely denied.

Greek officials claim that tour operator employees have also been caught dealing in drugs, "easy money" that helps supplement monthly salaries of about £450 a month – less than half the minimum wage in Britain.

"We have found reps selling pills, drugs like ecstasy, to kids," one tourism official said on condition of anonymity. "The drug-dealing and drug-taking is partly to blame for the fatal accidents involving Britons that you see on our islands every year."

Christina Tetradi, who heads the hoteliers' association on Zakynthos, goes further: "We've had cases of tourists thinking they can fly because they are in some altered state of mind due to drugs," she said. "And then they are found dead."

Last year, 237 Britons were arrested on the Greek islands of Corfu, Crete, Kos, Rhodes and Zakynthos, helping to earn Britons an international reputation as the worst-behaved tourists in the world. With Greece dependent on tourism and with British holidaymakers topping the list of arrivals, residents know they are between a rock and a hard place. "Local authorities know that if they try to stop the mayhem they will have the entire tourism sector against them," said Mayor Vasilopoulos on Ithaki.

British consular staff in Greece, alarmed by the disproportionate number of arrests, rapes and accidents involving Britons, have to help about 1,500 people in distress each year. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office last month launched a campaign warning Britons of the dangers of "wild" holidays abroad. More rapes involving British women occur in Greece than in any other holiday destination and many blame other Britons for the attacks.