Given that for most of us women, vacationing with a head to toe cloak isn't our top priority, we haven't often considered Saudi Arabia as a destination. But maybe that's about to change.
The Saudi government is pushing to attract more tourists to the country, aiming for 1.5 million a year, not including the Muslim tourists who come on pilgrimage. Three new training colleges will teach the locals to work as tour guides, airport officials and travel agents.
But it's not "tourism at any cost": The government will tell tourists what we can expect (we're waiting to hear) and that includes somewhat restrictive cultural norms. Probably not a destination for a beach vacation but you might get to run up and down a sand dune fully clothed.
A tipster just sent us this snap, taken near McCarran International in Las Vegas. Why advertise one sunny destination in another? The Travel Industry Association's annual conference was on in Nevada, and Orlando didn't want to miss out on the fun.
Oh, and you're not the only one with the dirty mind. Liz Benston at the Las Vegas Sun is right there with you. The ad may work for Orlando, she writes, but it'd never fly in her hometown:
Take the double and potentially negative meaning of "stays with you forever" when applied to a whirlwind trip to Las Vegas, for example.
If Betsy Ross and Ben Franklin were alive today, for what cause would they advocate? The Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation thinks they'd join gay and lesbian Pennsylvanians in a new promotion called "We Your People," which encourages LGBT travelers to look at the City of Brotherly Love when making those summer travel plans.
The campaign also has help from Southwest Airlines and is timed not-at-all-coincidentally with Gay Pride festivities in many cities. (Philly's Pride Day Parade is June 8.) Local business owners, boutique moguls and even one journalist (Philadelphia Gay News founder Mark Segal) are helping the GPTMC spread the word that Philly is a LGBT-friendly destination.
And the poster children are getting something for their trouble: Campaign spokesman Matthew Izzo reports getting fan mail, site traffic and MySpace and Facebook requests aplenty since getting involved. Since we're feeling the love, too, we've got a video with Izzo right after the click.
Japan is a magical place, really, where grown-ups can love kiddy cartoon characters without being embarrassed. And that's the angle Japan is about to use to promote itself to potential visitors from China and Hong Kong, because like the Japanese, they also love Hello Kitty.
Yep, the cartoon cat has just become an official tourism ambassador. It's all part of the simply-named "Visit Japan" campaign that hopes to increase tourist numbers to 10 million a year from the 8.35 million that visited last year.
It seems a pity, almost, that a country so rich in interesting culture and history resorts to a thirty-something-year-old cartoon kitty to bring in the tourists, but if it works, it works. And we admit we'd be persuaded to return to Japan if we got a free Hello Kitty key chain at passport control.
The new version of the famous I ♥ NY campaign will hype not just NYC but tourism attractions and destinations state-wide. The goal isn't necessarily to encourage road trips and tranquil, countryside tourism, though. Instead, it's a nod to the reality that people are driving less and taking shorter vacations.
To wit: The previous vacation guide to the state ran 200 pages while the new one is a much more manageable 40 pages, with a focus on three- and four-day trips. The revamped marketing effort will also be aimed at people already close to New York State:
The ads will be concentrated in nearby Northeastern states and Canadian provinces..."People drive less, but they don't stop driving," said Thomas Ranese, chief marketing officer at the New York office of the Empire State Development Corporation.
Tourism officials also hope that the ads encourage foreign visitors--who don't often leave NYC--to spend a few days touring the Finger Lakes, the Adirondacks or the Catskills. Maybe they should put together an Upstate Travel Map to help make planning those vacations easier?
The Caribbean Tourism Development Company has unveiled a new website and marketing effort because apparently there still aren't enough tourists visiting the region. Complete with booking tools, destination info, hotel listings and a calendar of events, it's a pretty complete package.
The CTDC needs to build a little more hype around the "Why My Life Needs the Caribbean" contest, though. With prizes packages at resorts around the islands at stake, you'd think there would be more than one video in the mix. But check out the tourism board's YouTube channel, and you'll find the contest definitely hasn't caught on.
We can hardly believe it, but maybe this video is actually working! The United States just set a new record for international arrivals, drawing 56.7 million foreign tourists in 2007. That's a good deal better than the previous record of 51.2 million, set in 2000. (We told you the US was the destination of the year!)
Though the ever-plummeting price of the dollar makes a trip to the country cheap for a lot of the world, the biggest influx of tourists is from neighboring Mexico and Canada.
That has the Travel Industry Association of America clamoring for government funding to hype the US in overseas markets. It'll be quite a fight, at least for the next 314 days: President Bush says money for tourism marketing isn't on his agenda.
As much as we love comparing guidebooks, scoping maps and planning sightseeing routes, sometimes we just wanna go on a vacation. The tourism folks in Philadelphia must know our pain 'cause they've put together an easy-to-use weekend planner called the "What to Do Thingmabob."
It's basically a personality profile that matches you to stuff to do. Example question and answers:
The Big Lebowski is...
· I can't remember if I've seen it. · I haven't seen it. · Flippin' dude-tastic in every sense of the flippin' word.
Guys will probably feel like they're taking a quiz in the back of Cosmo, but it's just seven quick questions. Once you're done, your custom-fitted itinerary pops up, ready for printing out or bookmarking in your browser. It even comes complete with a Google Maps mashup to help you plot your course.
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by amandak
