Jaunted

2006 Awards: Worst Travel Media Moment

12/28/2006 at 12:43 PM
Tags: 2006 Jaunted Travel Awards, Travel Media, New York Times, Lonely Planet, Strange Things (all tags)

This category does not indicate poorly written travel media, but rather scary stories or scary hype that caught our attention this year.

Read or write enough travel lit for a while, and the "_ is the next _" syndrome will leave you seriously jaded. We have to joke about it, otherwise we'd go crazy. We're not against trendwatching, but the hunt for "undiscovered," "it" destinations gets so out of control that it makes ridiculous, scary places sound as easy as Orlando.

So we have a tie for this one: Lonely Planet in Tiraspol, Transdniestr (Moldova) and the New York Times in Bogotá, Colombia. You couldn't pay us enough to visit Tiraspol, and we'd only consider Bogotá with a few bodyguards. Hats off to the writers who braved them, though.