Jaunted

Travel Advertising / Canada / Canada Travel / Tourism Boards / → All Tags

Go Visit Canada, Because It Has a Goat Riding on a Horse

There is a video embedded at the bottom of this post in which a goat rides a horse. It is directly relevant to Jaunted's purpose and mission to bring your attention to this video, inasmuch as it is a travel advertising spot for Newfoundland in Canada. It is also a video of a goat riding a horse, and we kind of like to think we would have found a way to pass it along no matter what.

There are of course debates over whether the video is real or staged. Some skeptics addressed themselves to the Newfoundland tourism board and basically said "no way a goat would ever ride on a horse." But instead of backing down, the tourism board re-raised. "You think it's impossible for one goat to ride the back of a horse?" they said, in our minds, "well fuck you, because there are four goats at this farm and they all ride this one particular horse." In our minds the Newfoundland tourism board is really belligerent and has been day drinking since 3pm, incidentally.

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Japan Travel / Travel Politics / Politics Travel / Booze Travel / Tourism Boards / → All Tags

Japan Tourism Becoming More Affordable (and More Alcohol-Soaked)

We have an inexplicable fondness for stories about how there are bad things happening over there, and how those bad things are making tourism affordable, and how people should totally take advantage of that. The perennial version of this plot involves Greece travel, which takes a hit every time the country goes on strike, which reduces hotel prices by huge amounts, which if you get your timing right can be awesome (if you get your timing wrong, of course, you'll have be absolutely nothing to do; so it goes!)

Japan has something similar going on, but it's even better because it comes without the risk of the country shutting down. It's not that Japan is rioting or anything (you would have heard), but there are two things driving down prices. The first is that tourism has been low since the Fukushima, and the travel industry has had to adjust its prices accordingly. The second is that Japanese policymakers are making a concentrated effort to fix the country's anemic growth by devaluing the Yen. That, apparently, has been awesome for tourists. We just kind of figured this was something you'd like to know.

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Disaster Tourism / Russia Travel / Tourism / Tourism Boards / Space Travel / Science Travel / → All Tags

Russia Meteor Tourism Now Becoming a Thing

A Russian region once shunned as the site of the world's third-worst-ever nuclear disaster, in which hundreds of people were killed, has now become a potential tourist destination because it was hit by a giant space rock that injured thousands of additional people. The local tourism board is actually talking about making parts of the territory into a "Meteor Disneyland," a reference to last month's Russian meteor.

That's it.

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Travel Ads / Travel Advertising / Videos / Singapore Travel / Tourism Boards / → All Tags

Skip the Slings and Just Get Lost in Singapore

A tourism campaign that asks travelers to "get lost" may sound like the opposite of what's typically intended, but that's where the folks over at Your Singapore have gotten creative by designing a campaign that uses the play on words to lure travelers.

The TV commercial is actually designed to attract more Australians to the city-state, but is a good showcase of what the city has to offer while dispelling common myths about the mega-metropolis. Singapore, like other major cities, has it's tourist misconceptions, but here they're attempting to embrace those frowns and turn 'em upside-down.

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Travel Contests / Videos / Norway Travel / Tourism Boards / Free Stuff / → All Tags

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream to Win a $5,000 Trip to Norway

Once again it’s time to put on your thinking cap, as there’s another travel contest with your name all over it. This time Norway is looking for a few more visitors, and they’re giving away a big trip to get travelers excited for Scandinavian shenanigans.

Their latest travel campaign is all about screaming, as they’re trying to show off that’s in no surprise that Edvard Munch and his work The Scream is from Norway. After all there are just so many sights, experiences, and adventures that will make you scream, shout, and celebrate.

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Travel Advertising / Scotland / Scotland Travel / Green Travel / Tourism Boards / → All Tags

Scotland Sets New Standard for Cute Travel Advertising

Copyranter calls them the "cutest brand ambassadors ever" and we're inclined to agree. According to the Scotland tourism board, which put together the campaign, the two Shetland ponies - Fivla and Vitamin - are wearing their "winter woolies" (?) in order to mark "the Year of Natural Scotland." The Year of Natural Scotland, in turn, appears to be a project that the tourism board totally made up.

As near as we can tell from the project fact page, they wanted to brand Scotland as a natural travel destination, and so they took the word "Scotland" and the word "Natural" and put them together. The ponies, we're told are "helping promote the Year of Natural Scotland with beautifully created cardigans."

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Travel News / Tourism Boards / Asia Travel / Philippines Travel / Malaysia Travel / → All Tags

Ladies and Gentlemen, Meet This Year's 'Miss Tourism International'

Media outlets and blogs from the Philippines are reporting that Miss Philippines Rizzini Alexis Gomez was also crowned the 2012/2013 Miss Tourism International in a pageant held over New Year's Eve in Malaysia. According to reports Ms. Gomez credited her win to preparations she conducted over the course of months.

The contest, which we promise is real and not just something we made up so we could run pictures we poached from the winner's Facebook page, has been running every year since 1994 with the exception of a few here and there. It even has a webpage, which admittedly is hilariously bad and doesn't seem to have this year's results. But it's a webpage on the Internet, so you can be sure that it's real.

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Music Travel / Gangnam Style / Tourism Boards / South Korea Travel / Seoul Travel / Videos / → All Tags

Seoul Tourism Finally Gets Hip to 'Gangnam Style'

Finally! We've been saying it since August (when we pinpointed the locations from the music video), but finally Seoul Tourism is using Psy's "Gangnam Style" song to advertise the capital city as a fun tourist destination.

The last few days have seen the introduction of a tourism board video that mimics Psy's dance moves, but splices in mini-interviews with foreigners in Seoul as they deliver one-word descriptions of the district of Gangnam-gu, the most fitting of which we'd say is "trend." Not gonna say "toldnya so," but yeah—we kind of did.

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Tourism Boards / Qantas / Australia / Australia Travel / Travel Industry / → All Tags

Australia Tourism's Very, Very Bad Week

For travel geeks who follow the often-dry travel industry, the intrigue surrounding l'affaire Tourism Australia—which has seen Australia's national flag carrier Qantas sever an agreement with Australia's official tourism agency over charges of sabotage—is kind of entertaining.

Here's the gist of it: the airline halted a $50 million deal between it and Tourism Australia over charges that Tourism Australia's chairman was involved in a "syndicate committed to unraveling Qantas' structure and direction," and that was trying to overthrow the current management and buy out the company. The partnership had lasted 40 years. Scandalous.

If you're actually in the travel industry, let alone involved with tourism boards that try to promote travel to Australia, the situation is much less amusing. In that case you're scrambling right now to deal with the fallout and telling newspapers about all the "damage" that needs to be "contained."

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Social Media / Sweden Travel / Travel Advertising / Tourism / Twitter / Tourism Boards / Bad Ideas / → All Tags

Whoopsies. Sweden's Twitter Campaign Gets Predictably Trolled

And now boys and girls, another object lesson on why skepticism is the proper response to advertising strategists and reporters who tell you that social media is magic and that engagement means letting everyone be heard. We have to do these posts every few years because our rants never seem to take hold, least of all with travel journalists and tourism boards.

Let's go back all the way back to four days ago Sunday. The New York Times publishes a puff piece about Sweden's Twitter initiative, done of course at the behest of an advertising agency, to "entrust the country's Twitter account [@Sweden] to a new citizen every seven days." Look how social! Look how effing authentic! To be clear, there was a point during which we actively adored the account, but that was when the guest curator was posting lamb photos every few hours.

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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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