The blunder that is DOT: Philippines' tourism department promoting sex tourism?

Really now, this?! Netizens claim that the new tagline reminds them of beauty parlors and Ricky Reyes's beauty program. I can't help but recall Vice Ganda instead. Very ABS-CBN!

Or they really mean this?!

Amongst the many blunders committed by the administration of Benigno Aquino III, the most shameful so far, that's beside the botched Chinese hostage crisis, is the changing of the tagline of the Philippines in its tourism marketing strategies. I've read somewhere that it is part of a 100 million peso budget.

From Arroyo's Wow Philippines they changed it to Pilipinas Kay Ganda since Aquino's administration has this penchant repulsion of anything that came from Arroyo's administration. Yes, I hate Arroyo, too, but not as much as the present administration does.

If you are a netizen, I am sure you have seen or read the uproar brought about by this changing of tagline. I agree with most of the critics were saying: If we want tourists to come, why use an unknown language to entice them? We are not teaching them Tagalog. We want them to come and spend their money here. Unless if they are Koreans.

Or if we want to be patriotic, why use a tourism promotion? There are more venues for that. Is that right?

Even the new website they have created [www.beautifulpilipinas.com] to prove how ganda is the Pilipinas was taken down as of this writing for "editing." Remember the recall of Aquino's first presidential order? I can see they always abused the words "not yet final" and "still a work in progress" to justify their errors.

What makes this website interesting is that a mere misspelling of Pilipinas to Filipinas would bring you to a porno site full of women in various forms of fornication. Yes. Well, since time immemorial, prostitution is known to earn money. Might this be the hidden agenda after all? The Catholic Church has yet to react on this as I am also sure they have already seen the porno site.

What did the tourism industry players do on this matter? I am not sure if they are excited about this since I haven't heard anything from them except from Noynoy's appointed DOT secretary Alberto Lim who assured that "the brand ... extols the innermost beauty not just of our destinations but also of our people and everything else that we do.”  That, including buying our women.

James Cordova, from Asian Correspondent wrote: How many more faux pas would these amateurs commit before the president realizes how dumb the idea was to appoint people to key government positions just because they joined in the campaign against Arroyo? There’s Ricky Carandang and Edwin Lacierda. Then there’s Mai Mislang. Now this.


Read more here:

• Sun or sex: Philippines botched tourism campaign
• Pure imagination
• From 'Wow' to 'Pilipinas Kay Ganda'
• Bothered and bewildered: Sex tourism in the Philippines?
• PH yanks much-maligned new tourism campaign off net
• No 'wow' factor in tourism's new slogan 

After several searches, here is the Pilipinas Kay Ganda logo and some: