From the dirty to the depraved, the barren to the downright boring, going off the beaten track isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be. This humorous guide, packed with bizarre facts, turns the travel genre on its head and uncovers some of the most unusual places the world has to offer. With weird and wonderful destinations from across the globe, discover the Kingdom of Dwarves theme park in China, an attraction where no-one measures above 5 feet tall. Or there’s Kazantip in the Crimea, where every year a mix of 150,000 ravers and Russian Mafia bosses with their teen brides in tow go to listen to electronic music on rotation for six weeks. A summer break to the city of Cherrapunji, India may be a mistake with an average 29 days of rain in July and 26 in August. Meanwhile the health-conscious among you should probably avoid Evansville, Indiana, recently declared America's fattest city. So unpack your bags, put away your passport, and save yourself some money by reading this guide. Then feel grateful that you’ll never make the mistake of visiting these places yourself.

There are hundreds of travel guides that tell you all the good things about a place and gloss over the not so good. This guide acts as an antidote to that and tells you what you really want to know. What are the chances of leaving the place alive? Will the food kill you, or will it be the water? How friendly or violent are the locals? Most of the time you don’t get to know this until you’re actually there – but by then it’s too late. '101 Places Not to Visit' takes you through a selection of cities and countries that any wise traveller should give a miss. Its tongue-in-cheek, laugh-out-loud humour outlines every not-so-attractive element of each place. A star rating of boredom, likelihood of fatal visit, friendliness of people and ease of travelling is included at the start of each entry to give the reader a taster. This is followed by an historical outline, its culture – or lack of it – and what culinary delights you can hope to endure. All the well-researched facts are sure to put off any foolish potential visitor. Well, at least they have been warned! Arranged by continent, the chapters are in alphabetical order for easy reference and concentrate on each nation's cities. History, climate and visas are all discussed with extra box text as appropriate.

The Routledge Handbook of Tourism Cities presents an up-to-date, critical and comprehensive overview of established and emerging themes in urban tourism and tourist cities. Offering socio-cultural perspectives and multidisciplinary insights from leading scholars, the book explores contemporary issues, challenges and trends. Organised into four parts, the handbook begins with an introductory section that explores contemporary issues, challenges and trends that tourism cities face today. A range of topics are explored, including sustainable urban tourism, overtourism and urbanisation, the impact of terrorism, visitor–host interactions, as well as reflections on present and future challenges for tourism cities. In Part II the marketing, branding and markets for tourism cities are considered, exploring topics such as destination marketing and branding, business travellers and exhibition hosting. This section combines academic scholarship with real-life practice and case studies from cities. Part III discusses product and technology developments for tourism cities, examining their supply and impact on different travellers, from open-air markets to creative waterfronts, from social media to smart cities. The final Part offers examples of how urban tourism is developing in different parts of the world and how worldwide tourism cities are adapting to the challenges ahead. It also explores emerging forms of specialist tourism, including geology and ecology-based tourism, socialist heritage and post-communist destination tourism. This handbook fills a notable gap by offering a critical and detailed understanding of the diverse elements of the tourist experience today. It contains useful suggestions for practitioners, as well as examples for theoretical frameworks to students in the fields of urban tourism and tourism cities. The handbook will be of interest to scholars and students working in urban tourism, heritage studies, human geography, urban studies and urban planning, sociology, psychology and business studies.

Both a memoir in travel essays and an anti-guidebook, Bad Tourist takes us across four continents to fifteen countries, showing us what not to do when traveling. A woman learning to claim her own desires and adventures, Suzanne Roberts encounters lightning and landslides, sharks and piranha-infested waters, a nightclub drugging, burning bodies, and brief affairs as she searches for the love of her life and finally herself. Throughout her travels Roberts tries hard not to be a bad tourist, but owing to her cultural blind spots, things don’t always go as planned. Fearlessly confessional, shamelessly funny, and wholly unapologetic, Roberts offers a refreshingly honest account of the joys and absurdities of confronting new landscapes and cultures, as well as new versions of herself. Raw, bawdy, and self-effacing, Bad Tourist is a journey packed with delights and surprises—both of the greater world and of the mysterious workings of the heart.

World Tourism Cities: A Systematic Approach to Urban Tourism is a unique and contemporary textbook that addresses the particular situation of urban tourism destinations in the 2020s by reviewing key issues, trends, challenges and future opportunities for urban tourism destinations worldwide, as well as city destination management. The book is divided into four parts, with Part I providing background chapters on world tourism cities. It begins by clearly defining world tourism cities and explaining the impacts of globalisation and urbanisation on these cities. The subsequent chapter explains the urban tourism phenomenon and traces its growth. Part II presents city destination management, planning and development and the marketing and branding of cities, offering practical solutions and approaches. Part III discusses major issues and trends in world tourism cities including resident well-being and quality of life, sustainability, smart tourism, crises and the rise of tourism in Asian cities, and the final part identifies the future opportunities for city tourism. Written in a student-friendly tone, the book is richly illustrated and contains several engaging features, including Sweet tweets (snippets of information on cities) and Short breaks (detailed case studies on cities). This will be essential reading for all tourism students.

A “hair-raisingly hilarious” journey through danger zones from Belfast to Gaza, by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author (Vanity Fair). “Tired of making bad jokes” and believing that “the world outside seemed a much worse joke than anything I could conjure,” journalist and political satirist P. J. O’Rourke decided to traverse the globe on a fun-finding mission, investigating the way of life in the most desperate places on the planet, including Warsaw, Managua, and Belfast. The result is Holidays in Hell—a full-tilt, no-holds-barred romp through politics, culture, and ideology. The author’s adventures include storming student protesters’ barricades with riot police in South Korea, interviewing communist insurrectionists in the Philippines, and going undercover dressed in Arab garb in the Gaza Strip. He also takes a look at America’s homegrown horrors as he braves the media frenzy surrounding the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Washington DC, uncovers the mortifying banality behind the white-bread kitsch of Jerry Falwell’s Heritage USA, and survives the stultifying boredom of Harvard’s 350th anniversary celebration. Packed with classic riffs on everything from Polish nightlife under communism to Third World driving tips, Holidays in Hell is one of the best-loved books by “one of America’s most hilarious writers” (Time). “Wickedly amusing.” —The Baltimore Sun “Funny, outrageous, perceptive.” —The Washington Post Book World

This volume considers world-making as the intersection of the fan pilgrimage experience and the responses of destinations. It critically examines the emerging field of popular culture tourism and its close connection with fan studies and placemaking. The chapters illustrate how different destinations capitalise on expressive cultural practices to attract fan tourists, the processes involved in their tourismification, and the outcomes for both visitors and local communities. The book establishes a common ground for the comprehensive and critical study of popular culture tourism development and fandom. It integrates theory and practice and provides evidence-based recommendations for popular culture destinations. It is a useful resource for researchers in tourism management, fandom, pop culture and media studies, as well as for those working in the tourism industry.