“Before you visit Croatia you should know… Croatia will waste your time” is the message in the promotional video created by the Croatian Tourism Association, depicting the country’s national parks. The same message has been published on the Croatia Full of Life Facebook page, which has over 100,000 followers. Many have commented on the improper use of the English language by the administrators and the potential detrimental effect it may have on the image of Croatian tourism.
The wording certainly raised many eyebrows. So, is this a grave mistake caused by insufficient knowledge of intricacies of the English language, or a marketing ploy used to attract the public’s attention and amass a greater number of views on various social networks? Croatian Tourism Association claims it is the latter.
The official explanation by the Croatian Tourism Association is as follows:
“The idea behind this post was to point out the important number of Croatian national parks in a creative and original way. Statistics confirm the success of this PR move. Our Facebook publication has thus far had over 100,000 views, just under 2,000 likes and has been shared 362 times. We have had 1,300 likes on Instagram; the numbers are only likely to increase on both social networks. We would like to add that comments from our non-Croatian fans on these posts have been but positive, with feedback such as “So true!” and “Just found your amazing page and really wanted to share a couple of photos from my holiday in your beautiful country last year”, and so on.”
Source: Verbalists Communication Network