Gawker: Tourism

Italy Pours Money Into Internet; Money Does Not Come Back

Hamilton Nolan — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:31:27 EDT

One good way to create a website is to pay a single agency just enough money to do the job, put them on a tight deadline, fact check the content, and then publish it. Easy! Many people who are incompetent in several vital areas of life—human interaction, for example—have nevertheless managed to start and run successful websites with few start up costs at all. But the nation of Italy decided, hey, why don't we do the opposite of all that, and see how much money we can burn through in pursuit of a conceptual online fiasco? So they did!

Italy wanted to build a website to market the nation to prospective tourists. The cost so far: $66 million over five years. And it doesn't even exist yet!

Among the problems: Too many cooks in the kitchen ("Several government ministries — in two administrations — and each of Italy's 20 regions were involved in creating the portal"), a product that went live in 2007 full of embarrassing errors, databases that weren't compatible with each other, and a logo purchased for $150,000 that was eventually discarded for sucking too much. A consultant tells the WSJ that the government could have had an agency complete the entire project by now for around 2% of what's been spent.

Try Blogspot.com, yo.

[WSJ]

Can A Movie That's Not Crocodile Dundee Make People Go To Australia?

Hamilton Nolan — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:33:35 EDT

I have to admit I didn't know that people actually physically picked up and visited and/ or moved to New Zealand just because they loved the Lord of the Rings movies. This is a fact, apparently, but what's the rationale? Hoping to run into a fantasy battle scene? I don't see it. Nevertheless, Australia is now planning to use a movie to lure in similar hordes of easily manipulated child-like Hollywood fans. If you go there you'll probably have sex with Nicole Kidman!

Australia's national tourism group is spending $38 million to partner up with a new movie called Australia, starring Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman.

Other movies have boosted tourism. The number of visitors to New Zealand increased 30% after "The Lord of the Rings" showcased the country's vast mountain landscapes. Some wineries in the Santa Barbara area saw a 300% increase in visitors after the film "Sideways" featured two men hitting the local wine scene. And thousands of visitors annually still flock to a baseball field in Iowa to get nostalgic about the Kevin Costner film "Field of Dreams."

Weird right? But how can people not drop thousands on tickets to Australia once they see this epic:

"Australia" follows two characters, played by Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, as they drive cattle across the continent on the eve of World War II.

Naked, I hope.

[LAT]

Famous NYC Whites Are Happy To Give You Directions

Hamilton Nolan — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:30:12 EDT

So much racism news today! What else are non-Caucasians concerned about? Their massive erasure from the portrayal of New York City in its marketing campaign to tourists, that's what! The city's laughably titled "Just ask the locals" campaign encourages clueless tourists to ask famous NYC celebrities—who are friendly, and stationed at strategic spots throughout town—where to go in the city. Deborah Harry likes Kenkeleba Garden in the East Village! But now people are grumbling, because a little counting reveals that an outrageously disproportionate number of the celebs featured in the campaign are white. Latinos, it seems, just don't sell:

According to NYC & Company, which is behind the campaign, 27 people were chosen to participate in the campaign's first two phases. Of those, six are black, one if half Korean and the rest — about 80 percent — are white (or, appear to be, anyway). That's non-Hispanic white, by the way.
Mind you, the actual percentage of non-Hispanic whites in the city is 35 percent, according to the 2000 Census. Hispanics, who can be any race, accounted for 27 percent, black/African-American 24.5 percent and Asians accounted for 9.7 percent.

NYC & Co. says the campaign is "evolving," and they plan to reach out to more Latinos soon. Especially fictional characters!

"We have a list of people we like to reach out to. It is very diverse. Ugly Betty is coming to the city, and we're reaching out to America Ferrara."

Ugly Betty is a New Yorker. America Ferrara, however, only plays one on television.

[City Room]

'We're Just As Good As NYC,' Lies Rest Of New York

Hamilton Nolan — Tue, 06 May 2008 09:43:50 EDT

New York City: It is surrounded by New York state. This is the key message that state officials are hoping to communicate to you, the public, with their new and improved "I Love NY" campaign [NYT]. "There are a lot of beautiful pictures of serene mountains and lakes. How do you make your mountains and lakes different?" asked an ad exec. By polluting them with dioxin and a plethora of prescription drugs? No, it turns out the answer is to suggest that "we have the pulsating heart and soul of New York City in everything we do." In fact, it looks like the whole campaign is an attempt to slingshot some tourists out of the city for little jaunts upstate. Which will be hard, because New York state pretty much sucks.

I say that from a position of ignorance, because I've never bothered to explore upstate NY much. Primarily because I'm convinced that it sucks. That makes me the target audience for this campaign! So how are they pulling skeptical people away from the confines of the city?

The twist comes in using the powerful appeal of the city to woo visitors to other locales, which is encapsulated in the phrase "The state with the heart of the city."

For instance, an ad for New York vineyards asserts that the wine "has to be just as good as what the city offers."

In other words: Why not drive way the hell upstate so you can have some wine that you could've gotten anywhere in your own neighborhood? We promise that we're trying to make it just as good as what you have at home.

Pass.

Why not just stay in Brooklyn? It's the place you can do everything, "from taking a rollercoaster ride, sunning on the beach, and seeing a dolphin show in Coney Island to exploring one of the world's best Egyptian collections at the Brooklyn Museum of Art." Hey, I love New York!

Texas Oddly Expects You To Visit

Hamilton Nolan — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 10:08:08 EDT

Houston: what's the point? The Texas city is most famous for the Bush family, big hair, and sippin on the sizzurp. At least that's the stereotype, and as a non-Houstonite, I don't care enough about the city to put in the effort to dispel that stereotype. But the city has anticipated this; they're rolling out an ad campaign designed to boost the city's reputation [NYT]. It's called "My Houston," and it features celebrities talking about what they like about the city. Unoriginal idea, Houston! Really now, are tourists going to flock to a hot, sprawling, asphalt-covered outpost in Texas just because racer A.J. Foyt fondly reminisces about speeding around its traffic-choked outer loop roads? In any major city, no matter how forlorn it is, you can find a handful of prominent citizens who will talk it up. They're called the rich. They'd get along pretty well anywhere—even Houston. Besides, why did the city go and spend a bunch of money on a new ad campaign when they could have just gone to YouTube and pulled off this perfectly adequate "Great Day Houston" rapping promo for free?

Ads Presume Europeans As Stupid As Midwesterners

abalk2 — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 15:59:28 EST

There's a new ad campaign designed to convince Europeans that, due to our crappy exchange rate, New York is a cheap place to visit. But that's not all:

An international ad campaign in the works, a first for the city, will try to dispel two other stereotypes: that New Yorkers are exceptionally rude, and that crime is rife in the city. Mr. Fertitta said he would rather foreigners picture "Sex and the City" than "Law & Order."

Known internally as the "Sluts, Not Nuts" campaign, the ads are expected to show representative scenes of New York life that include "horse-faced woman drinks Cosmo at opera," "horse-faced woman drinks Cosmo at cupcake place," and "horse-faced woman drinks Cosmo while typing newspaper column and reading it aloud." See ya soon, Frenchies!

Remaking the City's Image, With 50 Million Tourists in Mind [NYT]

Daily News Averts Clich Disaster

rbouncer — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 11:30:57 EST

So, record numbers of slow-moving, five-abreast sidewalk-blocking Michiganders are in New York this month, pushing back the start of our workdays by keeping us from going where we need to go. Read the story. It's informative, if not particularly groundbreaking. The headline, however, is what's important. It appears to us as though the Daily News hasn't yet veered into the neverland of blog clich -dom, opting to use an actual heart symbol instead of claiming that the tourists in question "heart" New York.

"Tourists are our future - these are the people who generate the moneys that give an awful lot of the people in this city a job, and we are not going to walk away from that," Bloomberg said.

We're sure everyone "hearts" New York. We're even more sure that nobody "hearts" a crappy blog clich .

Record Number of Tourists Say: I "Heart" N.Y. [NYDN]

Earlier: Bad Lingo: Blog Clich Detector Is The New Proofreading Carefully!