Sunday, February 22, 2009

Visitors Bureau covert site impressive

I found the following purely by accident:

http://www.padutchcountryblog.com/

At first glance, this site looks like nothing more than a blog about Lancaster County. But look at the "About" page: it is actually a function of the Pennsylvania Dutch Convention and Visitors Bureau...

What's more, the PDCVB is intentionally using social networks like Flickr, Twitter, FaceBook, and YouTube to "stealth" market Lancaster County tourism, making it look like ordinary people are posting when in fact it is really PDCVB employees. This has been announced several times at LCCCA committee meetings, and can be confirmed by documents posted on the PDCVB web site.

How is this all paid for? From the Visitors Bureau portion of the "hotel tax".