Lithuania tourism chief resigns after ad campaign gaffe

The head of Lithuania’s state tourism department has resigned red-faced after photos of Finland and Slovakia were shared on social media as part of a campaign to promote travel to the Baltic state.

Fittingly, the publicity campaign in question is titled “Lithuania. Real is beautiful”.

Despite claims by the department and local media agencies that the images served their purpose to “communicate emotion” — an argument met with derision by many online — such was the scandal that the tourism chief felt forced to resign.

“I have decided to step down as the head of the state tourism department,” Jurgita Kazlauskiene told journalists last week.

According to local media reports, the Real is Beautiful Facebook page had used stock images, as well as photos from photo sharing site Flickr. The irony was not lost on Lithuanian Facebook users, who shared images of international landmarks captioned as being in Lithuania, together with the hashtag #realisbeautiful.

Some government officials were able to see the funny side, with Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis posting a picture of the European Commission headquarters in Brussels.

“From tomorrow, we start working in the new government building in Karoliniškės,” he added, referring to a suburb of the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. Nonetheless, in a later post Mr Skvernelis expressed his commitment to investigating the “fraudulent” episode.

Source: BBC News