Gift of Happiness free travel promotions

If you have not heard yet, Costa Rica has a new spokesperson: a slough and a new promotion call “Gift of Happiness” Never mind the similarities sloths share with Costa Rica’s government process and certainly are not given gifts of happiness after visiting their ministries. We want to focus on Costa Rica’s governments tourism board or ICT’s decision to use a US based advertising firm to help increase Costa Rica tourism. The firms first decision was to leave the time honored “No Artificial Ingredients” campaign in the dust bin and begin a “Gift of Happiness” campaign.

Gift of Happiness – Conditions

The “Gift of Happiness” campaign is based on Costa Rica being labeled as the happiest country on earth along with lots of free vacations. That’s right, Costa Rica or ICT Gift of Happiness program is giving away millions of dollars in a gifting promotion being managed by a Facebook fangate. Facebook fangating is an allowable trick to get people to “Like” a certain page or group. In order to see the content or enter the promotion for the Gift of Happiness, you must have a Facebook account and then allow them to have access to all of your friends and group information. Gift of Happiness fangating, sometimes referred as content lockers, requires an certain action such as a click on the “Like” button in order to see what is below it. ICT’s decision to use Gift of Happiness fangating as a marketing tool is majorly “expo facto” and if they actually consulted SEO people, and not SMO people they would have learned that promoting Gift of Happiness campaign via content lockers is over. Do not get me wrong, content lockers work but fangating is over.

Gift of Happiness launches as Facebook changes popularity values

To illustrate this point, Facebook has known such Gift of Happiness fangating schemes artificially inflates popularity and interest has created a new benchmark to assign value to Facebook pages or groups. This new benchmark is called “talking about this” is located just under your “Like” count and is intended to generate a more realistic popularity value. It is simple logic, if you “Like” a page or group, you should be talking about it e.g. talk about Gift of Happiness promo. If not, what is the point of “Liking” it thus what is the point of a “Like” value? The answer is none and fangating is more akin to the old link farming schemes.

For the sake of furthering this editorial, the next question for those who live and breath tourism in Costa Rica as a means of financial support….”How do we become part of this promotion?” In other words, who are the hotels that will be converting those millions into actual stays in hotels? The simple answer is a 4 Star rating for your hotel. How many hotels in Costa Rica are going to be able to meet that criteria? I do not know any in Jaco area except Los Suneos. The majority of the tourists that visit Costa Rica do not stay in 4 Star hotels and are here for its natural beauty and wildlife. They are not coming here to sit in an all inclusive gated enclave fed meals and drinks that are the same food they eat back home.

Summing this up, what a great deal for top players who work closely with ICT and the Minister of Tourism but a real bad deal for the bread and butter, mom and pop, and B&B’s that make visiting Costa Rica a memorable experience.

Costa Rica is not alone in using state funds to promote free trips. Japan, has gotten into the game of giving away 10K free round trips tickets to boost tourism after the nuclear tragedy and you can read more about it here

Click here more about Jaco Costa Rica Travel News and Gift of Happiness

costa rica gift of happiness,gift of happiness costa rica,visit costa rica contest,free travel promotions,gift of happiness trip,government travel promotions,ict facebook travel promotion giveaway trips to costa rica,travel promotion free,video de ict gift of happiness

No related posts.