Jaunted

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The Cost of a Domestic American Airlines Ticket in 1964

Got a $20 bill? If this was 1964, you'd also have a domestic flight on American Airlines for that little cash. We know this because we unearthed a vintage American Airlines pamphlet advertising the '64 World's Fair in New York City, plus airfares to it from other parts of the USA.

Only a few weeks ago we marveled at the price of an AA ticket from California to NY listed in this very same booklet. Cross-country roundtrip was only $145 back then, a figure which would roughly equal $1,052 today, adjusted for inflation. Of course the last fifty years haven't seen such a hike, so we've got a whole new perspective on airfare deals right now.

And then we flipped to the inside back cover of the booklet, and discovered the prices for a domestic AA ticket. Holy moly $15.35 from Washington DC and $13.50 from Boston. Okay sometimes—during their @JetBlueCheeps Twitter sales, JetBlue occasionally beats even these low-low prices, but dang. It's all just another reason to wish you lived in the days of Mad Men.

[Scan: Jaunted]

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New York in the 1900s: $10 Dress Shoes and Collars for the Theatre

Times Square and Central Park attract tourists to New York City in droves, but what were the most exciting sights back in the 1900s? Well, steak houses, famous dance halls and of course the theatre district! Thanks to our find of a 1919-ish program from Cranin's 46th Street Theatre, we're exploring back in the day versus today, for NYC tourists.

In the 80+ years since theatre-goers sat down to read this program, much has changed and much has stayed the same. We've discovered that car companies will always target tourists, cigarettes once made for some of the coolest Playbill ads, and cosmetic companies will use any opportunity and celebrity to get you to buy, buy, buy.

The one category that hasn't changed so much however is menswear. Note that companies like Florsheim and Hart Schaffner Marx are still very much alive and kicking; President Barack Obama is notoriously a fan of the latter for his suits. The only thing not on a dude tourist's packing list these days? Collars. Good riddance.

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New York in the 1900s: When 'Paris-Inspired' Fashion Meant Something

Times Square and Central Park attract tourists to New York City in droves, but what were the most exciting sights back in the 1900s? Well, steak houses, famous dance halls and of course the theatre district! Thanks to our find of a 1919-ish program from Cranin's 46th Street Theatre, we're exploring back in the day versus today, for NYC tourists.

Where there are women spending money and having a great time, there will be ads for cosmetics, fashion and accessories. Going even a step further, there will always be celebrity-endorsed cosmetics, fashion and accessories. As it was in the early 1900s, so will it be in the future.

Browsing through this vintage theatre program, we noted a few trends in the ads geared at tourist women. One is that the items are all considered attainable luxury (hosiery, tweed suits, etc), so presumably the clientele of this particular theatre was middle class and looking to shop til they dropped in the Big Apple. Another trend is the focus on foreign style; this is the "Paris-Inspired" appeal.

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New York in the 1900s: When Cigarettes Ruled the World

Times Square and Central Park attract tourists to New York City in droves, but what were the most exciting sights back in the 1900s? Well, steak houses, famous dance halls and of course the theatre district! Thanks to our find of a 1919-ish program from Cranin's 46th Street Theatre, we're exploring back in the day versus today, for NYC tourists.

You don't see cigarette ads anymore. That's of course due to the many sorts of bans on tobacco advertising put in place over the years, but for the health benefits we've gained from decreased cigarette visibility, we tend to think that the world has missed out on some excellent graphic design. In the early 1900s, when theatre-goers sat down in their plush seats for a play or musical, tobacco was likely very much on their mind (and it stayed like this even through the 1960s). To smoke during, before or after or all of the above? The slick ads inside the program only intensified the desire.

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New York in the 1900s: See a Broadway Show, Buy a Studebaker

Times Square and Central Park attract tourists to New York City in droves, but what were the most exciting sights back in the 1900s? Well, steak houses, famous dance halls and of course the theatre district! Thanks to our find of a 1919-ish program from Cranin's 46th Street Theatre, we're exploring back in the day versus today, for NYC tourists.

Say you're sitting down with $95 tickets to see How to Make It in Business Without Really Trying and you're psyched to see both Daniel Radcliffe (aka Harry Potter) just as much as you are to see a musical in the Big Apple. Believe it or not, almost nothing has changed for theatre-goers in NYC over the last 90+ years. The actor names are different, the musicals and tech flashier maybe, but the thrill and excitement is the very same.

Another thing that hasn't changed too much as the theatre programs, stuffed as they are with ads for nearby restaurants and luxury products. Back in the day, however; theatre went hand-in-hand with aspirational items, so programs were chock-full of the latest must-have: the elegant automobile.

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Berlusconi Pushes Italian Staycations, Gets YouTube Backlash Instead

The only silver lining around Silvio Berlusconi's recent tourism ad, where he tried to cajole Italians into vacationing domestically rather than traveling abroad, is that he didn't actually use the word "staycation." That obviously would have been beyond the pale. Regardless, this commercial, where the Prime Minister intones about "Magic Italy" as the camera pans over the country's most famous landmarks, has already become a public relations fiasco for the government.

Rather than inspiring locals to embrace Italy's beauty and heritage, the commercial has triggered a wave of sarcastic YouTube knockoffs. The spoofs take the ad's soaring audio track and juxtapose it with images of roiling national turmoil. Instead of the Sistine Chapel, you get pictures of rioters; instead of fountains, crumbling buildings; and instead of coastlines, picture after picture of garbage left uncollected in the streets. That's what happens when you make a personal, emotion-packed appeal to a nation where 59% of the people think that you're too corrupt and/or incompetent to govern well. Oops!

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New Orleans Pulls Tone Deaf, Anti-British Tourism Ad

In a repeat of what happened with the Big Ash tourism debacle, the story about the Gulf oil spill is slowly moving from the objective environmental problem to the political nonsense surrounding it. Some states are trying to overplay the disaster to get more compensation from BP. Other states are working to underplay the spill because they don't want to scare away tourists. And now we've got the New Orleans tourism board taking BP's money and using it to print snide anti-British tourism ads. Classy!

The print ad in question, which was obviously and immediately pulled once sensible people saw it, played on the devastating defeat that Andrew Jackson handed to an invading British army during the 1814-1815 Battle of New Orleans. The ad's background has a tilted statue of Jackson and then in the foreground, written up in some kind of weird Alice in Wonderland-esque font, the text: "This isn't the first time New Orleans has survived the British."

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'Robin Hood' Isn't a Great Movie, but It's Inspiring Great Travel Guides

England's tourism board VisitEngland has been a whirlwind of activity lately and this month they're up to something a little bit different, taking advantage of the tourism buzz generated by Ridley Scott's Robin Hood.

We've already told you about how the movie is generating a spike in interest around Sherwood Forest. VisitEngland's new campaign, centered around their new "Myths and Legends" site, wants to expand that interest to all of England. They've created an interactive map that divides the country into dozens of regions and describes the fairy tales, myths, and stories based out of those areas.

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Goa Attempts to Censor Bikini-Clad Women From Tourism Ads

The state of Goa, located on India's western coast, is a biodiversity hotspot known for its stunning beaches and its ancient architecture. It's hot and humid for most of the year, with a short winter season and a normal monsoon season. More than 10% of India's tourists end up in the region, visiting churches and temples in between lounging on any of the almost two dozen designated beaches. That amounts to about 2.4 million visitors per year. So far so good.

Like almost everywhere else on the planet, Goa has a tourism board. The job of that board is to make people believe that they will find something appealing should they visit. For some reason they've settled on a strategy which takes the popular "hot chick in a bikini" visual and...umm...censors it out of all their ads. Now there may be ethical reasons for doing that. But simply as a marketing strategy their explanation seems, to us at least, mildly unpersuasive:

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Switzerland Says They've Got The Boobs And Puppies Of Your Dreams

We keep meaning to post this winter-themed ad from Switzerland's MySwitzerland tourism board, but pesky things like airline mishaps, terrorist attacks, and the US governments' overreactions to each were getting in the way. Luckily our planet is currently in the midst of a mind-numbing cold spell, so this the video is still eminently topical.

There are lots of neat things going on in the ad, from the straightforward emphasis on the destination—something that you'd think would be universal in travel advertising but isn't—to the "Get Natural" tagline at the very end. The motto builds on the rest of the video, which pokes a bit of fun at tourists who expect alpine lodges to have this mysterious aura of rustic authenticity.

Readers who appreciate the finer nuances of visual advertising will want to keep their eyes open for the gratuitous cleavage shot at the beginning. Watch it after the jump!

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Tourism Boards / Facebook / Tourism Advertising / → All Tags

Be New Hampshire's Facebook Friend, Save Money On Your Vacation

We certainly thought that Forest County's "Become Our Facebook Friend" campaign was kind of cute. The local tourism board's idea was very Web 2.0: get people invested in the product, have them activate their social network, and hope the campaign gets traction. New Hampshire's approach to Facebook-driven advertising is a little more old fashioned. Their Visit NH Facebook Page makes that most basic of all tourism appeals: "come to our page, get discounts."

It's not the most innovative approach to getting a following, but it's apparently the more effective one. After almost a year, the Forest County page—pushing a similar kind of "come be rustic" message—has 917 friends. Just a couple months into the New Hampshire campaign they're already close to 2,000 fans. Here are some more details on how they get the word out about the Facebook-related deals:

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Tourism Boards Say Their Failed Tourism Slogans Are Your Fault

It's been a season of rebranding throughout Nevada, as city and tourism board officials have hired PR companies to create new slogans for them and their municipalities. Or more accurately, it's been a season of attempted rebranding, as the contracted firms came back with one hilariously bad proposal after another. The city of Sparks and the Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority both had to reject new slogans after $100,000 efforts. Even Las Vegas was having problems, until they finally decided to dump their new slogans and go back to to "What Happens Here Stays Here."

Naturally the tourism boards and ad firms have undertaken a full review of these failures. They're taking fresh looks at their selection criteria, their talent evaluations, and their overall approach to PR. By which we mean they're blaming Nevada's citizens for being so gosh darn judgmental:

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