Like anyone really needs more of a reason to fall in love with San Francisco, the tourism board has developed a cute, heartwarming video showcasing all the little bites of life that make SF...well, SF. And there literally are bites, of pancakes.

The video is titled "A Day in the Life," but all the different neighborhoods, landmarks and little social experiences make it more of a week, or several weeks if you're an average visitor trying to hit them all.

It's definitely no ">time-lapse, tilf-shift Lisbon, but it is a nice watch if you're trying to convince yourself to hit the City by the Bay in 2012, or if you already live there and want to fall back in love with the city.]]> JetSetCD 2012-01-31T17:41:19-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2012/1/13/135837/548

North Dakota is the least visited state in the country. Alaska, which is a frozen tundra roughly as far as Europe from the East Coast, gets more tourists than North Dakota. So it's not surprising that you don't see much on Jaunted about the Peace Garden State (actual nickname). The most prominent post we have about North Dakota appears to be this 2008 thing on ancient and dried out dinosaur bones. Very metaphorical.

Trying to fix the dearth of tourism is proving to be something of a problem for the Flickertail State (also actual nickname). North Dakota doesn't really have any tourist attractions, so the state's tourism board had to brainstorm something creative. Naturally, they turned to sex. Because when advertisers have something to sell and no real reason people should buy, they turn to sex.]]> Omri 2012-01-13T15:10:16-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2011/10/24/204532/75

If you don’t have a standing date with Brian Williams each evening then you might have missed that there’s some bad stuff going down south of the border. In a nutshell, there are some pockets of pretty violent drug-related crimes, and this alone is keeping away would-be tourists from checking out typical hot spots like Acapulco, Cancun, and beyond. Mexico is trying to clean up its image—at least with the tourists—and they’re doing so by throwing a lot of pesos at the problem.

In total the tourism board is looking to shell out around $30 million to create commercials and other advertisements to encourage plenty of travel—especially from Americans—to the fun in the sun that’s only a quick flight away. Some of the commercials are still a couple weeks away, but we do have an idea of what they’ll be all about. Of course they aren’t just going to show stunning beaches and crystal clear water, and that’s because it’s way better to create a mini reality show! ]]> kjb 2011-10-25T10:31:11-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2011/9/23/143835/156

We occasionally run into these situations, where a commercial for some product reminds us that beautiful people in Italy are having a lot more fun than we are. Last time it was this insanely fun commercial by Italian vermouth company Martini, which was filmed in Croatia but still retained its Italian ethos. This time it's a commercial by Italian winemaker Tasca d'Almerita, which looks like something that could have been produced by an Italian tourism board. Except it's better.

The video is titled "A Glass of Sicily, and Adweek tells us that there's an Itanian "viral media company" behind the 80-second production. That explains, at the very least, how a commercial for a wine maker ended up with an interactive map on Flickr, though not why it was filled with photos and videos that are functionally travel advertisements for Sicily. Again, if they didn't get at least some money from an Italian tourism board they got ripped off. It's a gorgeous commercial.]]> Omri 2011-09-23T14:38:35-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2011/9/12/142349/229

Around this time last year, domestic goddess and noted Louboutin aficionado Martha Stewart waded into Philadelphia's intractable Geno's-vs-Pat's cheesesteak war, declaring that Pat's was "kinda bland" and giving her approval to Geno's. Having experienced a conflict of that magnitude, the celebrity was no doubt ready for this year's Labor Day trip to a part of the world where the battles are almost as heated: Israel.

Stewart spent her weekend in the Holy Land attending her nephew's wedding, scouting locations for an upcoming TV segment, and macrame-ing things (we're just guessing about that last part, though she still does that though, right?)

Her professional judgment on Israel? It's pretty interesting. Pretty interesting indeed.]]> Omri 2011-09-12T15:05:01-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2011/7/20/135856/906

About a year ago we wrote up Mexico's "The Place You Thought You Knew" tourism advertising campaign. Mexico's strategy was to focus on all the interesting things you could find in the country, and to hope against hope that you'd forget about all the unpleasant shootings and beheadings and stuff.

A new campaign from post-Arab Spring Tunisia is kind of like that, in that it's aggressively the exact total opposite. Instead of dodging the issue of violent riots, which swept across the country during its democratic revolution and claimed over 200 lives, Tunisia's tourism people have turned them into a series of dark jokes. The angle is definitely getting people's attention, so two points for honesty and another two for cleverness we suppose. But dude.]]> Omri 2011-07-20T13:58:56-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2011/6/1/151438/2374

A few months ago Newsweek published its list of "America's Dying Cities," putting Grand Rapids, Michigan at #10. The rust belt city is demographically upside down, having lost more under-18 residents than it gained in the last decade. Wikipedia says that the per capita income for the city is $17,661, with one in every five children living below poverty. Being mayor is a part-time job. Literally.

In an effort to show that Newsweek was wrong and that they were still hip and relevant, Grand Rapids responded with a YouTube video of thousands of residents lipsyncing to Don McLean's American Pie. And to think, there are people out there who think that the Internet is dumbing down public debate.]]> Omri 2011-06-01T16:21:17-05:00 Search Jaunted string http://www.jaunted.com/search/