Travel company faces backlash over ‘sick’ viral campaign
An Australian travel company has been accused of staging a ‘sick’ prank in order to promote itself.
Holiday Mooloolaba has faced a backlash since it emerged it was behind a Youtube video in which a French woman appealed for help in finding the father of her unborn child.
The desperate woman said she had met a man in an Irish bar in Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast and had become pregnant after a one-night stand.
She said she had lost the phone with his number in it and had returned to the same town in order to track him down.
The video went viral, with over 1.3 million views, and was picked up by media outlets worldwide.
But in a follow-up video called ‘I found him’, it has now been revealed that she was just an actress and the whole thing had been an elaborate advertising ploy for the travel company, which rents apartment and luxury homes on the Sunshine Coast.
Reacting to the backlash, the people behind the campaign – Sunny Coast Social Media – wrote: "Calm down everyone, it was just a joke."
Many critics pointed out that a similar stunt had already been used by the Dutch tourist board.
But the company’s owner told the Huffington Post the positive publicity would far outweigh the negative.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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