Once a phrase or buzzword enters the collective consciousness of brochure writers, it can prove hard to dislodge. With grim inevitability, anywhere with under 100 rooms that isn't a Travelodge becomes a boutique hotel, its gym becomes a wellness centre, and any spot of outdoor water is an infinity pool.
These pools are so named because they give the appearance of merging seamlessly into the oceans beyond. In the case of the 'infinity' pool at a French resort I recently visited, the unbroken view lasted a more finite three feet to a wrought-iron fence.
But the most notoriously overused phrase in the history of travel-speak is the execrable 'country of contrasts', and its partners in crime, island/city/county of contrasts. What do Namibia, Dublin, Nottinghamshire, Cephalonia and, yes, even Plymouth, apparently have in common, according to the tourist offices? You guessed it. There's probably even a campsite of contrasts out there somewhere.
I finally abandoned all hope at an event last week to promote Sapmi, the name that the indigenous Sami people of northern Scandinavia give to their land. It's a wondrous, beautiful place, where I once spent a fun-filled, memorable week. But let's face facts: for six months a year it's dark, freezing, and the Sami eat reindeer. The other six months are light, relatively mild and you get berries with your reindeer. Every picture has a Sami dressed in a Beefeater outfit with a reindeer in tow: herding it, sledding with it, or about to skin it.
And yet there it was, official, on the back of the brochure: 'Sapmi is a land of contrasts.' Please, somebody, make it stop.
Dive, dive, dive or fall, fall, fall?
Anyone who's ever tried a spot of scuba on holiday might be getting the shivers if they go near a cinema this weekend, as a new film dramatises one of the diver's darkest fears - being left behind.
Open Water is based on the true tale of a tourist couple accidentally abandoned on the Barrier Reef. What's particularly gruesome is that, of all the dangers any diver will be aware of - nitrogen narcosis, the bends, dodgy equipment, things with stings and, occasionally, sharks - this is a way to slow death that few would have contemplated.
Like many holiday divers, I've not usually planned ahead but have been tempted on the spur of the moment, at a beach where the locals persuade you that the water is crystal clear, the coral blooming, and the fish have to be seen to be believed. So you put your faith in the slightly stoned-looking divemaster and his rickety boat, and the equipment he's casually tossing you; maybe it's not the most professional set-up you can imagine, but surely - surely? - the buggers won't leave me behind?
Alarmingly, the scenario is "quite realistic", according to Nigel Eaton, editor of Diver magazine, who recommends signalling devices and even your own collapsible flagpole to guard against the worst.
"The dangers from marine life are overemphasised," he consoles. But don't relax yet: there's more. "The biggest danger is getting on or off the boat. If it's started when it should be stopped then you're in trouble."
Before we all hang up our tanks and fins for ever, Eaton says that only about a dozen Britons die annually diving - fewer than the numbers killed, according to the last complete Foreign Office statistical breakdown, falling out of their rooms on holiday. If any Hollywood producer wants to explore a really lethal area, Drunken Brits' Hotel Balcony could be the most chilling film of all.
· Gwyn Topham is editor of Guardian Unlimited Travel
