Orlando chuckles at Vegas' expense
Source: Casino City Times (Original Article)
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Orlando chuckles at Vegas’ expense
6 June 2008
by Liz Benston
By Our Partners at the Las Vegas Sun
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — The Orlando Convention and Visitors Bureau has come up with an advertising slogan that is drawing chuckles at Las Vegas’ expense.
The slogan on behalf of the family-friendly Florida vacation destination, appearing on a billboard near McCarran International Airport, reads, “What happens in Orlando, stays with you forever.”
The Las Vegas tourism folks won’t have much time to mount a counterattack or even discuss potential trademark infringement of its famed “What happens here, stays here” campaign. The short-lived billboard message was timed to coincide with the Travel Industry Association’s five-day annual conference that brought travel agents, convention planners and tourism officials from across the nation to the Las Vegas Convention Center this week.
Though Orlando and Las Vegas compete fiercely for convention business, they cater to fairly distinct groups of tourists, with each location running ads that would be inappropriate and even laughable in the other. (Take the double and potentially negative meaning of “stays with you forever” when applied to a whirlwind trip to Las Vegas, for example.)
“We consider ourselves friendly competitors. We like to have fun with Vegas,” Orlando Convention and Visitors Bureau spokesman Brian Martin said. Last year, Orlando advertised on mobile billboards at the association’s conference in Chicago. Las Vegas will get its chance to return the favor when the show moves to Miami next year and Orlando the following year.
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