About us, the Travel Forum Org.

These travel forums are owned and operated by;

Travel Ethos, Ltd.
The Post House,
Barracloughs Lane,
Barton-upon-Humber,
North Lincolnshire,
DN18 5BB
England
Telephone, Voice Mail & Fax: +44 (0)200 000 8468

Registered Office:
Bank House,
Southwick Square,
Southwick, West Sussex,
BN42 4FN
England
Registered in England No. 4033395

The principle director and content manager is Mark Andrew Austin

Footnote:
The company was originally called Bali & Thailand Hotels, Ltd. (same company, same registration number) but was changed when the company did an increasing amount of reservations business outside Bali and Thailand. The name changed in 2003 to Worldwide Internet Hotel Reservations, Ltd. because the company was operating a number of booking sites outside Bali & Thailand. In 2007 the name was then changed (for the last time) to Travel Ethos, Ltd. to reflect the mandate of both the reservation site, which now donates all of its direct earnings to local children's charities, plus this strictly non-commercial forum.

Mark Austin says;

I started this travel forum and a small direct reservations site as a sideline and hobby in April / May 1999 after I traveled to Bali, used the Internet extensively and found much to fault with the existing travel forum and reservation sites at that time. In July 1999 I started my Thailand Travel Forum even though I had not yet been there, because I wanted to go there though and no forum for it otherwise existed.

I started the travel forum side because I had evidence that the owners of the existing Bali Travel Forum were posting themselves as tourists for commercial gain and because many of the posters were interested in hair braiding in Kuta, when I was interested in going to areas of Bali where, believe it or not, there was little to absolutely no information available at that time on either the Internet or in tour books like Lonely Planet and the Rough Guide (e.g. The lava flow area the other side of Mount Agung).

I started the direct reservations side (where you book with and pay the hotel / villa directly) because I hate dealing with uninsured, etc. agents who take your money and then give you problems.

When I first started my sites I had Neanderthal members of the other forum come and post hate messages by the score (everything from alleging I was a convicted pedophile to being a drug dealer; the irony being I was subsequently accused of saying the same things of others on "their" forum) and accuse me of doing the very thing the other forum owners did (cheat), even though my forums were setup to make this impossible. Because of my stand against fraud, corruption and troublesome red necks I have been called "Nasty Mark" and even had the owner of the Bali Expat Forum, who I actually had supported and even sent him business clientele, openly discuss how to hack my forums with certain of his members; I believe all their words and actions speak volumes about themselves and less about me. I believe this makes it clear you need to be choosey about who your travel with and who you get information from.

While the "udder" forum (as I came to call it) members were demonstrating their vast vocabulary and eloquence with persistent hawkers in Kuta Bali and negotiating the cost of a genuine fake Rolex down from US$20 to US$10, I was going on walkabout around Bali to places they had never even heard of.

While other forums are great for posts such as "The Nusa Dua Beach Hotel is the best luxury hotel I have stayed at and I have stayed at many; I have now gone back to the Nusa Dua Beach Hotel 20 times in the last years" (spot the flaw in their claim to be a good judge of luxury hotels), I tried to make mine accurate. In fact I hated the Nusa Dua Beach Hotel when I stayed there (after having such high expectations), think it is probably the worst so called "luxury hotel" on Bali and probably in the world, and I explained why. As someone who ran / runs a reservations business, I did actually get to stay in many hotels.

I actually ended up spending a great deal of time and money investing in and helping design a small luxury villa resort because I felt hotels supposedly at the luxury end of the market in Bali were so bad!

Critiquing such popular hotels does not ingratiate you with the institutional travel industry or with people that only ever stay at that hotel. I came to realize or maybe just believe these large hotels spun the false image that they were the best while actually being bland discount volume room providers to the tour group industry.

One of the things I reported on the forums was travel fraud, such as travel agents in Bali who use "Bait and switch" tactics to get business. Bali and switch is where they offer hotel rooms at below what they can sustain just to get someone's credit card details and with it psychological commitment, only to turn round and say "That hotel is full (when it was not), but we have something even better (worse and more expensive) for you. When a customer of my company's reservations site complained that an agent called Bali Discovery Tours were offering rooms at a hotel they had booked at a higher rate through my company with a "Price Guarantee", I contacted that hotel.

The hotel advised me that the rates Bali Discovery Tours were offering could not be honored and Bali Discovery were made to remove the rates. The owner of Bali Discovery Tours, one Jack Daniels, subsequently has made a series of malicious and false police complaints against me with corrupt Balinese police officers who have continually acted outside the law and breached my civil and human rights.

You can read about my quest against the corrupt mafia police of Bali (to have several senior police officers jailed) here: Ugly Bali. Truly, I believe one day I will achieve this.

My wife is Balinese and we have two children together; we mostly live in Portugal not least to avoid physical harm by "agents" of my aggrieved I believe psychotic business competitor. We lived mostly in Phuket, Thailand for 4 years until one day local Thai gangsters substantially linked to my aggrieved business competitor in Bali came to our home and we had to move in a hurry. Incredibly I found out afterwards the corrupt Balinese police had actually placed a watch order against me with Interpol, had been given details of my movements around the world and of my home address, and this information had then been given (sold) to Jack Daniels in Bali.

Since being so afflicted and trying to find out why, plus as my wife opened up more and more about the realities of her country, I have come to know the truth behind the smiling facade.

Do not worry, travelers to Bali or other 3rd world countries do not get afflicted by the mafia police, my telling it like it is, investments and relationships made me a fat target! But understand I now know and report things like many people can or do not, and that I know why accordingly it is important for as many travelers as possible to show Travel Ethos.

Enjoy your stay in Bali, Lombok or Thailand.

Thank you