Swedish “Liseberg” smear campaign: Don’t send your kids to Crete; Provocative or stupid?

Posted by keeptalkinggreece in Very Mix

Swedish amusement park Liseberg in Gothenburg had a glorious campaign idea: to gain new customers by preventing them from going to vacations in Greece. “Some children are forced to to go Crete in summer – Guaranteed cheerful kids in our park Liseberg”, claims the poster that decorates streets of Gothenburg but also the company’s website. To see is a boy in tears, allegedly he is crying because of his upcoming vacation in Crete…

The poster shocked primarily the tourist sector in Crete, with the Association of Hoteliers in Chania complaining directly to the Swedish ambassador in Athens.
The president of the Association M. Giannoulis commented to local media Flashnews “I understand that this company wants to attract customer, but not with such methods.”

The Association sent a complain letter to Swedish embassy in Athens, to Foreign and Tourism Ministry and hope that Tourism Minister Olga Kefalogianni will solve the issue. Kefalogianni is due to visit Sweden on Thursday in an effort to stimulate the flow of Swedish tourists to Greece.
PS Amusement park Liseberg? Not amused!
UPDATE:
In KTG’s comment section we got following message at 8pm:

“the banner has been deleted
their reply before downloading this banner was
We love Crete,
We are very sorry that the marketing campaign is not to your liking, but we would at the same time underline that the message has been taken out of context. This is not a campaign that belittles Crete; on the contrary Crete has been chosen as a holiday destination which is so good, that it can compare with Liseberg in the minds of children.
In short, the campaign compares Liseberg with three most popular holiday destinations for Swedish visitors – Crete, Mallorca and Italy. The campaign, which is humorous and very tongue-in-cheek, will run over two weeks, and in week two the campaign will have a different message.
Again, we apologize for the hurt feelings, but would again like to underline that this has far from been the intention of the campaign.
the banner at 7pm was deleted”

KTG checked the website and the boy crying in order to avoid Crete was indeed removed. But also replaced by a crying girl scared to go to … Mallorca, Spain. lol