Overbooked

By: Elizabeth Becker

Narrated by: Alma Cuervo

Tourism, fast becoming the largest global business, employs one out of 12 persons and produces $6.5 trillion of the world’s economy. In a groundbreaking book, Elizabeth Becker uncovers how what was once a hobby has become a colossal enterprise with profound impact on countries, the environment, and cultural heritage.

This invisible industry exploded at the end of the Cold War. In 2012 the number of tourists traveling the world reached one billion. Now everything can be packaged as a tour: with the high cost of medical care in the U.S., Americans are booking a vacation and an operation in countries like Turkey for a fraction of the cost at home.

Becker travels the world to take the measure of the business: France invented the travel business and is still its leader; Venice is expiring of over-tourism. In Cambodia, tourists crawl over the temples of Angkor, jeopardizing precious cultural sites. Costa Rica rejected raising cattle for American fast-food restaurants to protect their wilderness for the more lucrative field of eco-tourism.

Dubai has transformed a patch of desert in the Arabian Gulf into a mammoth shopping mall. Africa’s safaris are thriving, even as its wildlife is threatened by foreign poachers. Large cruise ships are spoiling the oceans and ruining city ports as their American-based companies reap handsome profits through tax loopholes. China, the giant, is at last inviting tourists and sending its own out in droves. The United States, which invented some of the best of tourism, has lost its edge due to political battles. Becker reveals travel as product. Seeing the tourism industry from the inside out, through her eyes and ears, we experience a dizzying range of travel options though very few quiet getaways. Her investigation is a first examination of one of the largest and potentially most destructive enterprises in the world.

©2013 Elizabeth Becker (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

A collection of an emerging business

The part about Paris was great.It is the most visited place due to its desire to remain culturally interesting.The part about Dubai was shocking.I hadn't realized they used slave labor to build their magnificence.The part about America was disturbing.We our a closed country that doesn't welcome tourism.Something that could bring much needed capital to an ailing nation.Obama lost the Olympic bid to Brazil when it could have been in Chicago instead.The history of cruising was quite good.It doesn't seem like the cruisers pay their crew much better that the people in Dubai,but the tourists get pampered and enjoy using the ship as a kind of floating hotel.The ships seem like highly controlled environments in which the management profits deeply from the crew's honest effort.I know now not to buy in the places they steer the customers to.Instead of a ship being a floating hotel,perhaps it s a kind of financial prison for everyone on board while at sea or in port.I was left feeling that this is an industry that still has room to grow.A creative person could create the right kind of tours that would give the tourists the kind of rich cultural experience they are looking for.

Excellent analysis of the tourism industry

If you are looking for a well-researched and comprehensive overview of the tourism industry and its implications, this book is for you. I’m an avid traveler and this book is one of the best I’ve read in a while. It’s long but worth your time.

good info, needed and editor with a sharper pencil

extremely deep research, but too many overlapping data points and interviews. could have been 30% shorter.

Insightful Perspective of Tourism

I’m a professional travel writer. I found Elizabeth Becker’s book well researched and well written. I didn’t agree with everything she presented about the travel industry, mostly her criticism of the loose relationship between travel writers, travel publicists, tourism bureaus, and other tourism operators due to comped trips. It’s an unfortunate reality that there are many travel writers who don’t produce following receiving a trip, but there are more hardworking travel writers who apply their journalistic ethics no matter who is funding the trip than there are freeloaders. Many travel writers are freelancers for publications. Increasingly, travel writers are paying a large portion of certain aspects of their own press trips, usually the flight. Publications don’t cover this or anything beyond a small paycheck for the article. This means travel writers are working harder to make that money back writing stories and content for travel websites, speaking gigs, and selling travel themselves, before breaking even or being able to pay the rent. However, publications benefit from advertising sales and readership connected to the articles. It’s a harsh reality, but for those of us who really love, not only travel, but telling other people about their travel experiences and where to go, what to do, what to look out for and what not to miss we find our way to make it work. Honestly, there wouldn’t be travel stories in publications other than the New York Times, Conde Nast Traveller, and Travel & Leisure that don’t allow sponsored press trips for travel writers and have travel budgets and pay their writers, if travel writers weren’t supplemented by a variety of travel entities.

Other than Becker’s critical look at how travel readers get their travel content, this book is a critical look at the state of travel today. The book was well researched and skillfully written.

Informative and interesting, a bit verbose

The author's personal experiences, and insights, often overly detailed, interwoven with historical and political background of many global destinations. Mainly held my interest with additional info about places I've been, although along with much I already knew. Could be less engaging for readers/listeners who aren't widely traveled.

I wish the author had tied things together better at the end, e.g. what things should we all be paying attention to at home and abroad to support healthy tourist industry advancement and sustainability.

Narration was clear but a bit stodgy, older school teacher sounding, also due to author's less contemporary style and vocabulary, which seemed to take so much longer to hear than to read.

Well researched book ruined by colonial points of view

I learned a good amount about the global tourism industry from this book, however I recommend listening to this book with a critical ear. The lens is typical of Western media, full of white saviorism, and excusing colonialism. It lacks respect for majority black and brown countries.
The book begins in France, where the author fawns over the tourism industry, particularly the Bordeaux wine region. Cambodia is looked down upon for not being as it was when the author first saw it decades earlier and Dubai is described as a place with little culture.
Once we get to Zambia, I grew tired of the author’s sweeping references of Africa as if it were a country instead of a continent. “White Africans” as the author calls them, are heralded as the eventual saviors of wildlife, rather than calling out Europeans as the original poachers.

Debbie Downer is alive and well

What would have made Overbooked better?

way to negative....

Would you ever listen to anything by Elizabeth Becker again?

no

What didn’t you like about Alma Cuervo’s performance?

not an issue

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

I love to travel....I don't need a lecture on the evils of travel...

Any additional comments?

YUK!

About absolutely nothing

A lot of short stories from which impossible to learn or understand anything at all.

Complaint fest. All complaint no solutions

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

People who want to commiserate with other Debbie Downers

Would you ever listen to anything by Elizabeth Becker again?

By accident maybe.

What didn’t you like about Alma Cuervo’s performance?

Probably spot on performance. Wouldn't blame the reader at all

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Overbooked?

I wouldn't have let it go to print without offering solutions to every issue.

Any additional comments?

Bummed me out.