The Awful Truth From the World of Tourism

Doug Lansky is an American traveler, who though it was enough being quiet about his terrible trips to different countries. He decided to set up a site in which travelers from around the globe would share the awful truth about their journeys. On his site, called TitanicAwards, the author welcomes people to take part in a wide range of surveys, share images and clips and state about the worst things from the world of tourism.



You can find about the worst beer in the world, the beaches that are considered to be the dirtiest, the world\'s worst cruise ship and the food that makes you sick. For instance, a traveler shared his experience with a cocktail of Kathmandu. After consuming the drink he had been sick for three days and lost 8kg. The category of the worst dishes includes fried tarantulas (served somewhere in Asia), stir-fried grasshoppers (you can try in Indonesia) and boiled fermented cow\'s nose - a food you can try in Bali.



Today, whenever you see a travel story, it sounds more like and ad, persuading people to visit an unknown, unexplored region. Being fed-up with the stories that read like an advertisement, Lanksy, who works as a syndicated columnist in the United States, stated that today people simply do not get enough information about the other side of international tourism. If there are critical reviews of books and movies, why there\'s no criticism in the travel industry? It\'s hard to find a website that tells about the awful things people face during their trips and there\'s very little information regarding the disadvantages of a fancy new resort. The reason for this is rather simple - tourism represents one of the biggest businesses in the world.



Most often, travelers who look forward to convey a somewhat less pleasing information regarding their trips, discover that website editors are simply not interested in such kind of information or there are just too many words describing the awfulness of the journeys and editors are unable to skillfully edit the whole issue so it would not look like too much whining - a whiny article is something that doesn\'t fit into selected space on the website.



However, Lanksy says that there are some features of travel that one may find interesting and even entertaining. Some of the most famous columnists decided to share their information about trips to other regions. One of them is Tony Wheeler, who founded Lonely Planet publications. He says that the worst drivers in the world are in Saudi Arabia. He also says that in India he saw the longest visa line. However, he was really frustrated with the most ridiculous, Kafkaesque \"mind bogglingly stupid bureaucracy\" he witnessed in Russia.



According to the author of the books The World\'s Most Dangerous Places and Come Back Alive, Robert Young Pelton, who apparently enjoys paying a visit once in a while to dangerous places, the least polite militants he has ever met were in Liberia. He says that there was a small unit of young soldiers that were led by a 15-year-old boy who was the \"lucky\" boyfriend of three or four girls and who often used to smoke a huge cannabis cigarette. \"These guys (mostly 10 - 12 year olds) like to cut the enemy to pieces after they were dead. Not very sporting chaps,\" he mentions in his book.



Air Travel

Another contributor to the list of the worst the world of travel can offer is Pauline Frommer from the United States. She is the author of guidebooks that bear her name. According to Frommer, the worst airline in the world is Air Pakistan \"with duct tape holding together seats, cockroaches in the aisles\". Johnny Jet, a travel writer, says about his less enjoyable trip to Fiji. He has taken Sun Air which turned out to be the worst airline he has ever taken. \"Everything was smooth on my puddle jump ride to Savusavu until we went over the mountain range,\" he says. Jet says that when they hit turbulence, the plane\'s alarm went off and the aircraft suddenly dropped. \"I had to pound my heart a couple of times to start that sucker back up once we flattened out,\" he said. In addition, throughout his trips to different countries, he picked Tijuana as the worst place he has ever been, describing it as a place that is dirty, depressing and full of people that just wait for the moment to rip you off.



The Smelly Side

Tourists also accuse toilets, which are very likely to spoil the whole vacation. For example, Larry Habegger, a traveler who visited a lot of countries, believes that the filthiest toilet he saw was in Jogjakarta, Java. For the popular American travel photographer Catherine Watson the dirtiest and most unpleasant was \"The dank, filthy, unlighted ruin of a public ladies room in central Bucharest, before Ceaucescu\'s horrid government fell.\" She says there was no toilet paper, no soap, no sign of feminine hygiene products not only in Bucharest but in the whole Romania. Well, at least now things somewhat changed to a better side.



Profitable Business

The data provided by the World Tourism Organization in 2008, the figure representing international tourist arrivals registered a two percent increase and reach the point of 924 million, a 16 percent increase from the previous year. In 2007 international tourism brought $856 billion, which is about a third of the exports of services provided around the globe. The World Tourism Organization predicts that by 2020 international tourism will register 1.6 billion travelers a year.