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After yet another foreign tourist was killed in Florida last week, authorities there hastened to assure the traveling public that they were cracking down hard on violent crime and that prospective German or English visitors shouldn't change their travel plans.
Also last week, tourism promoters in the Midwest launched a big campaign to assure visitors that the region was ready and willing to receive tourists, despite those floods last summer.
Just before the floods began, there was a mysterious disease killing people in the Four Corners region. Even so, the governor of New Mexico told prospective tourists that there was no reason to change their travel plans.
Tourism is the biggest industry in the world, and it apparently functions like any other industry -- if there's a conflict between telling the truth and making money, so much the worse for the truth.
This was captured perfectly in the novel Jaws.
A
great white shark is eating folks who swim off the Amity
town beach. The Amity town fathers are meeting. Can't
let word of this get out, or it will scare away the
tourists,
they conclude.
I felt this trend while editing the Breckenridge newspaper 16 years ago during ski season. The highway was so slick that a snowplow tipped over, and we ran the picture on the front page.
As soon as the paper hit the streets, I got a call from
the Breckenridge Resort Association. You shouldn't run
pictures like that,
the woman informed me. Tourists
will get the idea that the highways are unsafe, and then
they won't come here to ski.
A predecessor at the newspaper had run into trouble the previous summer, for running a story that plague had been found in local rodents. Again, potential tourists might be alarmed, and informing the public, while doubtless a worthy goal for a journalism student, must take second place to considerations of how the news might hurt the local economy.
It makes you wonder how leaders in the past would have responded if tourism had been a major industry during antiquity:
· In London yesterday, King Edward III said
rumors of the so-called Black Death
were unfounded.
Though this vile pestilence hath spread even into the
Low Countries,
the regent said, England hath been
spared in 1349.
Accounts that London Bridge was jammed with wagons
carrying corpses were scurrilous canards,
the regent
said. In fact, these wagons are carrying goods to the
exciting new boutiques that our indigenous artisans have
opened in the new historic district designated along the
River Thames.
· Rome looks better than ever now, Nero announced
recently, and we invite visitors from throughout the
Empire to see our expanded Coliseum and new
Parthenon.
The great fire of 64, the emperor said, turned out to
be a blessing in disguise. It cleared much of the clutter
that had grown in the city, and now we offer broad avenues
and handsome marble buildings.
The Imperial Convention and Visitors Bureau said tourist
group discounts were available for a special entertainments
at the Coliseum where the arsonists will be punished in
exciting and novel tortures, never before seen.
Only in Rome this summer can you see a Christian
fight a lion,
a bureau spokesman noted, and we hope
many people will take advantage of this rare
opportunity.
· Although Cuzco has experienced some
difficulties
recently from hordes of Spanish tourists,
Supreme Inca Atahuallpa said last week that our
beautiful city has just become so popular with visitors
from Europe that they temporarily overwhelmed our tourist
facilities.
The ruler said a planned expansion of the Great Square
of Cuzco, previously scheduled for 1540, will be completed
by 1532, and that the ferry fleet on Lake Titicaca has been
tripled to handle increased traffic. We want everyone to
know that there's plenty to see and do in the Andes, and
that we're planning a great summer of exciting special
events,
he concluded.
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