Jaunted

Israel Travel / Holiday Travel / Tourism / Tourism Boards / Religious Travel / → All Tags

Plan Now, if Not Months Ago, for Passover in Israel

It's prime travel time to Israel, but. BUT! There's an incredible amount of tension in Israel right now, with sporadic fighting in the country's south and a looming crisis with Iran on the horizon. So if you're the kind of person who looks for deep travel discounts in the wake of geopolitical unrest, as we've urged you to be, you might want to keep your eyes on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem deals.

On the other hand, last month saw a record-breaking number of tourists visit the Holy Land, braving not only the geopolitical problems but also fairly horrendous weather. That kind of demand is going to keep prices at the very least stable, and Israel is already a country with a high cost of living. But those aren't the only reasons why Israel travel is going to stay pricey.

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Travel Advertising / Tourism Boards / Fashion Week / New York Travel / New York / Britain / Britain Travel / Victoria Beckham / Anna Wintour / → All Tags

Britain's Newest Tourism Campaign Plants Anna Wintour and Victoria Beckham on the NYC Subway

Some people—contemporary economists, most historians, journalists on every inhabited continent, academic and professional political scientists, not a few government officials, etc—have taken to suggesting that Britain is facing inexorable decline. Having once ruled the high seas and controlled an empire upon which the sun never set, the Brits have seemingly shifted their focus from having a navy to obsessing over "Jersey Shore" knockoffs.

Quite the opposite, says the tourism board officials at VisitBritain. Not only is 2012 going to be the best year ever, but the United Kingdom itself is simply great! To show you just how great the United Kingdom is, and also to "deliver long-term economic benefits from the unprecedented level of interest generated by the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games," they've launched a tourism campaign called GREAT.

To perfectly complement that kind of subtle branding, they've just locked up Victoria Beckham to cut commercials for them.

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Videos / San Francisco Travel / California Travel / Tourism Boards / → All Tags

Three Minutes, Twenty Seconds to Fall in Love with San Francisco

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.

Sex Travel / North Dakota Travel / Travel Ads / Tourism Boards / → All Tags

North Dakota Pulls Ad Over Sexism Complaints

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.

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Mexico Travel / Tourism / Tourists / Travel Ads / Tourism Boards / → All Tags

Mexico's Tourism Brainstorm: One Part 'Cash-Cab,' One Part Reality Show

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!

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Italy Travel / Wine Travel / Tourism Boards / Travel Ads / Travel Advertising / → All Tags

Sicily Wine Commercial Does Its Job of Making Us Long for Italy

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.

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Israel Travel / Tourism Boards / Martha Stewart / Food Travel / Jerusalem Travel / Celeb Travel / → All Tags

Martha Stewart Travels To Holy Land, Declares That It Is Good

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.

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Tunisia Travel / Travel Advertising / Travel Ads / Tourism Boards / → All Tags

Tunisia Launches World's Most Morbid Tourism Campaign

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.

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Travel Ads / Videos / Flash Mobs / Michigan Travel / YouTube / Tourism Boards / → All Tags

Grand Rapids, Michigan's Flash Mob Video About Death Goes Viral. Yay?

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.

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Movie Set Travel / Bangkok Travel / Hangover 2 / Thailand Travel / Tourism Boards / Celeb Travel / Movie Travel / → All Tags

'The Hangover 2' May Already Be Hurting Thailand Tourism

The Hangover 2 just hit theaters and its already expected to be one of the biggest movies of the summer, if not the plain biggest. That means there will be millions of people getting an up-close look at Bangkok, where the movie was filmed, but will they leave with a good impression of the city?

So far, word of mouth on Twitter hasn't painted a very positive picture of Bangkok. Yesterday, @KassidyCook1 tweeted, "Hangover 2 was hilarious. Note to self: never go to Bangkok...", while @TayWhosthatsLS wrote, "Staying away from Bangkok Thailand Lol for many reasons thanks Hangover 2".

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Tourism Ads / Tourism Boards / Minnesota Travel / Travel News / Travel Ads / Videos / → All Tags

Minnesota Travel Ads Now Starring Indie Bands

It's notoriously difficult to make travel ads that don't look like every other travel ad ever. Green mountains, crystal clear streams, maybe a time-lapse shot of clouds moving behind mountains—and then cut to an outdoor restaurant patio where an ethnically diverse and indeterminately aged group of casually dressed professionals delightfully dine over plates of presumably local cuisine. Most ads, in other words, look exactly like every spot from the Pure Michigan campaign.

To counter the sameness and get some attention, tourism boards have been trying to get ironic and edgy. There's nothing wrong with that—and it's sometimes effective—but when it fails, it spectacularly fails.

There's nothing more obnoxious than irony that tries to be funny and falls short (right Spirit Airlines?). So it's kind of refreshing to see this ad from Explore Minnesota, which takes the opposite approach...

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Social Media / Ireland Travel / Facebook / Dublin Travel / Travel News / Tourism Boards / → All Tags

Tourism Ireland Unveils Farmville Knockoff To Make You Want To Visit Ireland

We've been pretty skeptical about airlines and tourism boards that go all-in on social media, the fear being that "building something shiny" gets in the way of "designing something useful."

There are productive ways of using social media—Twitter for customer service, Facebook for coupon campaigns, etc—and then there's what happens when companies build something just because everyone else is doing it. Creating Facebook games in particular has become a problem, with some travel companies doing very well and others not so much.

The newest attempt at social gaming comes from Tourism Ireland, which hopes to harness the power of Facebook to get tourists to the Emerald Isle. The game, dubbed "Ireland Town," is built as an explicit Farmville knockoff. Users are tasked with creating their own Irish town in between visiting tourist attractions and defeating challenges. Those who get through are entered in a contest for a four-night stay in Ireland.

And here's where things begin to head south.

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