Tourism Advertising Can Be Deceptive
All you need to do is go on enough travel blogs or even on Yelp! and check out the
travel horror stories to understand that tourism advertising has become more and more deceptive. Consumers need to be very careful before purchasing travel packages from travel agents or online advertisements. Many times these "bargain" deals can make you stuck in a seedy, dirty hotel room in a bad part of town in a foreign city.It is exactly what happened to me once when I traveled to Nyc for a company conference. I purchased a travel package that looked good on paper. The package advertised a very low round trip airfare to the Big Apple plus a lovely, "quaint" room in mid-town Manhattan. Beware of the words "quaint" and "cozy". These words really just mean small and cramped. I was dropped off by the taxi that I picked up at JFK airport in front of a dumpy looking building with crackheads wandering by in front. Unruffled, I went in and was shown to my $135 per night room. For that amount of money, which I was told was a bargain in New York City, I still expected a fairly decent room. Instead I was shown to a closet sized filthy room with no bathroom. The bathroom I was to share with some other guest on that floor. It was totally unacceptable to me and I left to get a more costly room that was better quality even though I'd already paid for the dumpy place. I ended up paying way more than I would have if I had just gotten the better quality, more costly room in the first location . So that you must beware and realize that specially in the world of travel, tourism advertising can be very untruthful and you definitely get what you pay for.
You see it all the time in tourism advertising: beautiful white sand beaches, lovely cabanas by the beach, a wonderful pool, large sunlit rooms, etc. What they don"t show you are the panhandlers that make your life impossible when you try to relax at the beach, or the scores of drifters and vagrants that line the streets near your crappy hotel. This is the same hotel that appeared so inviting from the pictures they showed on the site. The site showed happy upscale couples (beautiful people only of course) all having the time of their lives at the gorgeous resort. The reality can be starkly different. Many times, specially when traveling to the Caribbean, Central or South America, or Mexico you will end up at a motel looking place with broken air conditioners, leaky faucets, dirty linen, squeaky mattresses and bug infestations. The pools at these places can make you sick if you actually go in them. You have to be very careful when you are out at night at many of these places because of the riff-raff and criminal element that hang around the sidewalks just outside your rooms.
Yes you have to be very, very careful when it comes to believing tourism advertising. The perfect way to avoid this is to check out actual customer reviews on blog sites like Yelp.com or the blog pages of Travelocity or travelzoo.com. A good review can save you from a ruined vacation.
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