RP in new push for tourists

MANILA – Reacting to worldwide reaction to the  hostage incident at the Rizal Park in which eight Hong Kong tourists were killed and travel advisories on the Philippines by at least six countries, including the United States, the government, through the Department of   Tourism (DOT) launched early this week its new push for more tourists with a marketing slogan in Pilipino, “Pilipinas Kay Ganda,”  but the campaign immediately drew criticisms from lawmakers, foreigners and citizens.

Tourism Secretary Alberto Lim said the Filipino campaign slogan was anchored on the beautiful destinations of the Philippines, and the many activities tourists can engage in when visiting the country.

Less than 24 hours after the “Pilipinas Kay Ganda” brand was launched, its accompanying web site (http://beautifulpilipinas.com) was shut down by the DOT due to accusations of publishing plagiarized content. 

On the #HelpDOT discussion on Twitter, it was also pointed out that the web site’s URL was similar to a porn site’s URL (http://beautifulfilipinas.com). 

The logo uses splashy tropical colors in red, green, blue and aqua for the word “Pilipinas,” with the photo of a tarsier to represent the first “i.” The letter “L” is shaped like the trunk of a coconut, and the dot above the third letter “i” is a playful yellow sun. Underneath the “kay ganda!” phrase are two squiggly lines representing the waves on a sea. Beside it in tiny letters is an instruction of how to pronounce “ganda” and what it means in English. 

The DoT came out with the new slogan to be able to keep up with its Southeast Asian neighbors in terms of tourism and to offset the downtrend in tourists coming in due to the botched hostage incident with Hong Kong tourists at the Luneta and the travel advisories of six countries, including United States, Japan, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

According to the data from the United Nations World Tourism Organization, Malaysia last year has about 23. 6 million tourist arrivals, followed by Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and even Vietnam, which had around 5 million tourists. The Philippines had a little more than 2 million.

Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago said that “we cannot just have ‘a beautiful country’ because everyone says that.”

Some lawmakers  proposed tapping their colleague and world boxing champion Manny Pacquiao in the campaign to attract more tourists to the country.

Even former senator and tourism secretary Richard Gordon, author of the previous slogan, Wow Philippines (Wow stands for wonders of wonders), said he was not impressed with the new slogan.

Maybe “Wow Beautiful Philippines,” a combination of the old and new slogans, would do, Gordon said.

Secretary Lim said the new slogan wants to convey “what else, the beauty of the Philippines! 

Lim said that in surveys conducted among visitors from different nationalities, the top choice of visitors of what attracts them to the Philippines “is the warmth of the people and the beauty of our land and sea.”

“So instead of doing the same as the [other countries] by use of an adjective like ‘amazing’ or ‘incredible’ or ‘your’ before the name of the country, we chose to make an exclamatory remark ‘Kay ganda!’
after Pilipinas. Then in smaller print we give a pronunciation code and an explanation [So beautiful! or Kirei desu!] in the language of the target market,” he said.

Prior to Monday evening’s official launch of the new marketing slogan/branding at the Oceana, San Miguel by the Bay, at the Mall of Asia before tourism stakeholders, bloggers and some members of the hotel and restaurant industry questioned why the new slogan was in the Filipino language.

President Aquino earlier in Yokohama  announced the new slogan would “reinvigorate” the country’s tourism campaign, replacing the WOW Philippines slogan.

Tourism Undersecretary Vicente Romano III, who handles the DoT planning and promotions, said that advertising company Campaigns & Grey undertook the branding project.The firm produced campaign materials for President Aquino during the elections.

On the new DoT web site, Romano admitted that the deluge of negative feedback and comments forced the DOT to close it down in the meantime. 

A few hours after the launch, #HelpDOT on Twitter engaged various tweeters in a discussion on how to improve the slogan and the web site. Some felt that the new slogan sounded too “showbiz,” while some accused the site creator of publishing content “copy and pasted” from other sources, and that its URL address was similar to a porn site’s web address.

Several tabs on new site also linked to the old DOT web site (www.tourism.gov.ph) whose first page carries a photo of Secretary Lim and brief message of welcome.

“We decided to put it down first due to the comments we received. Basically, it was just a face-lift of the old [DOT] site,” Romano said.

He added that a new URL address will be chosen, the content would be cleaned up and a new site should be up in three weeks.

He explained that the content in the new site “came from the different tourism web sites the DOT had been administering. This is still a work in progress, and it was just an interim site that we rushed in time for [Tuesday] night’s launch of the new slogan. We just wanted to change the look first but not the content [which was sourced from DOT’s other sites].”

Other sites administered by the DOT are Experience Philippines (http://www.experiencephilippines.org), Visit My Philippines (http://www.visitmyphilippines.com) and WOW Philippines (http://www.wowphilippines.com.ph). 

The Philippines’ image abroad suffered a setback after the botched rescue attempt of Hong Kong tourists on August 23, as well as the recent travel advisories by the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, France and New Zealand warning its citizens not to travel to the Philippines due to terrorist threats.