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| The Irish Hotels Federation has called for “immediate” and “creative” measures to combat the massive falls in tourist numbers the country is now suffering.
It was reacting to official figures yesterday that showed an 18pc drop in numbers during May. Visitor numbers from Britain fell by even more - 23pc - during the month. “The dramatic decline recorded in overseas visitors lays bare the decimated state of our tourism industry this year, said federation president Matthew Ryan. “These figures compel the government and the tourism agencies to take immediate, radical and creative action to reverse this downward trend.” The federation says the 23pc drop in British visitors was “singularly disappointing”, given the country’s importance as Ireland’s largest overseas tourism market. The IHF says high impact promotion initiatives that send positive messages internationally to attract overseas visits here are now urgently needed. Two immediate suggestions by the IHF to assist rejuvenate tourism is to offer free travel to over all UK residents aged 66 and over and enlist our high profile international sporting and entertainment personalities’ support to promote Ireland. “We need to up our game in tourism marketing abroad - marketing efforts need to be sweated hard to assist reverse the major fall off in visitors that is happening right now,” said Mr Ryan. According to Mr Ryan, extending the current free travel on public transport scheme for Irish citizens aged 66 to all UK citizens in the same age category would send a highly positive tourism marketing message to the UK and tap into the 9.5 million people aged over 66 in that jurisdiction. “It is an intelligent use of an unused resource and would impose no substantial additional costs to Irish Rail and could be a major catalyst to increasing our attractiveness in UK market. “This, combined with the extensive value offers the industry is currently offering, would make a compelling marketing campaign for our most important overseas tourism market.” |
- Coors Beer put its slogan, “Turn it loose,” into Spanish, where it was read as “Suffer from diarrhea.”
- Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.”
- Clairol introduced the “Mist Stick”, a curling iron, into German only to find out that “mist” is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the “manure stick.”
- When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the U.S., with the beautiful Caucasian baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the label of what’s inside, since most people can’t read.
- Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno magazine.
- An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market, which promoted the Pope’s visit. Instead of “I saw the Pope” (el Papa), the shirts read “I saw the potato” (la papa).
- Pepsi’s “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation” translated into “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave”, in Chinese.
- Frank Perdue’s chicken slogan, “it takes a strong man to make a tender chicken” was translated into Spanish as “it takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate.”
- The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as “Ke-kou-ke-la”, meaning “Bite the wax tadpole” or “female horse stuffed with wax”, depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 characters to find a phonetic equivalent “ko-kou-ko-le”, translating into “happiness in the mouth.”
- When Parker Pen marketed a ball-point pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to have read, “it won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you”. Instead, the company thought that the word “embarazar” (to impregnate) meant to embarrass, so the ad read: “It won’t leak in your pocket and make you pregnant.”
Even the biggest company’s can screw it up sometimes .