Venezuela's paper goods shortage has worsened to the point that some hotels are now asking guests to bring their own toilet paper and soap, Fusion reports.

Bigger hotels are able to circumvent product shortages by buying things like coffee, sugar, toilet paper, and soap from black market smugglers, but smaller, family-run places often can't afford that.

"It's an extreme situation," Xinia Camacho, owner of a 20-room boutique hotel in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada national park, told Fusion. "For over a year we haven't had toilet paper, soap, any kind of milk, coffee or sugar. So we have to tell our guests to come prepared."

Camacho says she refuses to buy from the black market on principle.

"In the black market you have to pay 110 bolivares [$0.50] for a roll of toilet paper that usually costs 17 bolivares [$ 0.08] in the supermarket," she said. "We don't want to participate in the corruption of the black market, and I don't have four hours a day to line up for toilet paper at a supermarket." So, she says she's been asking guests to come with their own toilet paper since December.

And although the Venezuelan government has reportedly been cracking down on people smuggling essential goods into the country, it hasn't responded to complaints about the shortage from tourism industry associates and organizations.

Camacho, for her part, says she loves her country but is becoming less and less optimistic about its future every day.

"I can't be irresponsible; I can't tell a foreign tourist to come to Venezuela. As soon as they get off the plane, they will encounter risks," she says.

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