France was rehabilitated

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    At the end of the week an advertising campaign ‘World is large. France is one’, directed at rehabilitation of the country’s image after recent events, is coming to an end. As Tatiana Kulikova, press-attaché of national tourist office of France (who launched the campaign) told BANKO that ‘if during first 9 months of this year we recorded the increase of the tourist flow by 13%, after Russian mass media covered the situation in France in the beginning of November 2005, we noted the decline. We do not have exact numbers yet, our base is the information from tour operators. Judging the gravity of the situation the Ministry of tourism in France provided 100 thousand Euro for advertising campaign to the Moscow representative office of Maison de France. It was aimed at making the customers want to go to France as well as strengthen the usual image of calm, stable and cherished country for traveling. Russian became the 5th country (along with the USA, China, Japan and Australia’ who received such a budget’.
   The campaign, which included modules and article in the press, videos on radio, contextual advertisement on popular search portals and banners on thematic sites, was carried out by an advertising agency ‘Europe Advertising’. Timofey Studilin, client relations director, says: ‘I was surprised by the instant reaction of French authorities to the drop in demand. I cannot recall anything similar. In general, the French did a good job, as the campaign was also aimed at supporting tour operators who work with France. Herewith although the campaign was organized very quickly, its aim was not as much to encourage the immediate urge to visit the country but the large-scale improvement of the country’s image. And I think they achieved it’.
    Before the initiative of the French authorities, many operators noted the drop of demand for France. Oksana Lokteva, marketing director of Lanta-tour voyage say: ‘We also had the local drop of demand. But today compared to the previous year everything is back to normal – we sold almost all tour to France for New Year and we are working with applications for the next year. Maybe the interest was stimulated by the advertising campaign. Yet it is not topical to talk about the crisis of the destination. Everything has settled into shape’.