Manila (dpa) – The Philippines on Friday launched a “fun” tourism campaign, more than a year after canning a campaign widely criticized for its boring slogan and a website that could be confused with a porn site. “It's more fun in the Philippines” is the new slogan for the tourism campaign, Tourism Secretary Ramon Jimenez Jr announced. Jimenez said the slogan answers the question foreign tourists often asked: “Why should I go to the Philippines?” “All the people who love the Philippines now have the simple, truthful answer to a question we are asked all time,” he told reporters at the launch of the new brand. Jimenez said with the new campaign, the Department of Tourism hopes to draw 4.2 million tourists in 2012, up from 3.7 million tourists that visited the Philippines last year. The new slogan received mixed reactions on social media sites, where some hailed it for being “simple but true” and “straight to the point.” But others derided it for being a “downer, big time,” “uninspired,” and “the lamest excuse for not being creative.” In November 2010, the Department of Tourism, at the time under a different tourism secretary, launched a new campaign called “Pilipinas Kay Ganda” (Philippines, So Beautiful). But it was scrapped within less than a month when it came under a barrage of criticism for being uncreative and similar to a campaign for Poland. The campaign's website also turned out to be similar to a site that redirects web surfers to explicit content. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/ieCBS Tags: Fun Campaign, Philippines, Tourism Section: East Asia, Latest News, Travel
