Renowned journalist turned author Elizabeth Becker‘s latest book, “Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism” hopes to give insights into the blooming multibillion dollar industry .She says that she was irritated and by the paradigm shift in the global economic force and was compelled to write this book in sort of bringing everything into the attention of public. She feels that, how in spite of its relevance most often it gets stuck to lifestyle columns of magazines and newspapers. She believes that through her book, it would get the deserving attention and also that people realize how the industry is also a job giver.
She estimates that around 1 billion people travel abroad each year spending approximately seven trillion dollars. However she also points out the pitfalls in the industry. As a part of her research she extensively travelled around the globe, met people and did a thorough statistical survey.
All this is quite evident in the book as she supports all her claims using plenty of data. In her book she describes the research she did in Cambodia, whose revenue from tourism contributes to almost 20 percent o their Gross Domestic Product. She continues saying that, in countries like that money does not help the poor and instead the elite and other foreign countries are highly benefitted from the industry.
Becker also examines other issues that affect them such as environmental exploitation and sexual assault on minors which most often are concealed by the authorities. She also agrees that Cambodia is not the only country acing these issues and she says that was her driving force for writing this book. Through this book she hopes that tourism industry would be taken seriously and an environment would be created which would be beneficial to the tourists and the local people alike!
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