Andy Robinson

In these pages, we follow Andy Robinson through ten chilling travel chronicles across the Americas, uncovering the dark side of post-pandemic tourism—an industry increasingly dominated by national and multinational monopolies that control hotels, airlines, restaurant chains, and entertainment complexes, all while pushing local communities to the margins.

Taking off from Madrid’s dystopian mega-airport, Robinson visits iconic destinations in the United States and Latin America, revealing the disturbing realities hidden behind their brightly lit façades. All-inclusive luxury resorts built on the exploited labor—and sometimes the corpses—of workers in Cancún. The forced displacement of residents in the city of magical realism, Cartagena de Indias, and of the Mapuche community in Bariloche, all to make way for snow-loving tourists. The themed desert of Las Vegas. The Louis Vuitton luxury train to Machu Picchu that leaves Aymara vendors stranded on the platform. The culture wars at Disney World, including those waged by its overworked employees. The crumbling ruins of Amazon Towers deep in the Amazon jungle. And a host of other destinations better avoided, as the author boldly ventures into a new genre of “anti-travel literature.”

Written with biting black humor, Horror Tourism exposes the contradictions and inequalities of an industry we are all part of. After reading this book, no traveler will see tourism the same way again.

"With many years of journalistic experience, Robinson takes us not just on a sun-and-sand getaway, but into the darkest corners of the tourism industry—into the world of mass tourism that overwhelms cities and causes them to die of their own success."Alejandro Gutiérrez, former Proceso correspondent in Madrid