Misleading advertising for Cozumel

I JUST SENT THIS EMAIL TO VISITMEXICO.COM ABOUT A VERY INTERESTING ADVERTISEMENT IN OUR NEWSPAPER TODAY:

Gentlemen:

In the Travel Section of the November 9, 2003, Atlanta Journal-Constitution is a full-page advertisement promoting scuba diving in Cozumel. There are three species of fish that are very prominently shown, apparently as examples of what divers will see in Cozumel waters:

Two Ornate Butterflyfish

One Orangespine Unicornfish

One Clown Triggerfish

None of these fish can be seen in Cozumel. In fact these are Pacific Ocean fish, primarily the western Pacific, and none of them can be seen within several thousand miles of Cozumel.

Your advertisement is extremely misleading and false. My wife and I have been diving in Cozumel, and the diving was very good. However, with few exceptions (such as the Splendid Toadfish), the fish in Cozumel are the same as divers can see throughout the Caribbean. Your advertisement is clearly intended to give the impression that divers can see the Pacific fish in Cozumel.

You should be ashamed of yourselves for deliberately trying to mislead people.

Sincerely,

Jim Chambers

Many tourism agencies go to stock agencies and pick out the prettiest tropical fish. I suspect it was a mistake out of ignorance

Once on a group trip to Grand Cayman I got to talking with a professional photographer. He said he was shooting photos for an article that his dive magazine was doing on Cozumel. Having dove Cozumel I agree that there are plenty of good shots to be taken there.

Having dove Cozumel I agree that there are plenty of good shots to be taken there.

Absolutely! The first two dive trips my wife/dive buddy and I took were to Cozumel, and the diving was first rate. If only the drinking water didn't make us sooooo sick!

But, yes, they could have been honest (or "accurate" may be a better word if the boo-boo was unintentional) and shown fish actually found in Cozumel waters, which would have been impressive enough.

Jimbo, You giving them too much credit.

I don't think that the one that wrote that advertisement even know if it’s a solt water's fish or not.

From what I have been reading a couple of months ago, the Seychelles tourism agency was caught using pictures from the Maldives and Polynesia to illustrate its official brochures.

I JUST SENT THIS EMAIL TO VISITMEXICO.COM ABOUT A VERY INTERESTING ADVERTISEMENT IN OUR NEWSPAPER TODAY:

 

Gentlemen:

 

In the Travel Section of the November 9, 2003, Atlanta Journal-Constitution is a full-page advertisement promoting scuba diving in Cozumel. There are three species of fish that are very prominently shown, apparently as examples of what divers will see in Cozumel waters:

 

Two Ornate Butterflyfish

 

One Orangespine Unicornfish

 

One Clown Triggerfish

 

 

None of these fish can be seen in Cozumel. In fact these are Pacific Ocean fish, primarily the western Pacific, and none of them can be seen within several thousand miles of Cozumel.

 

Your advertisement is extremely misleading and false. My wife and I have been diving in Cozumel, and the diving was very good. However, with few exceptions (such as the Splendid Toadfish), the fish in Cozumel are the same as divers can see throughout the Caribbean. Your advertisement is clearly intended to give the impression that divers can see the Pacific fish in Cozumel.

 

You should be ashamed of yourselves for deliberately trying to mislead people.

 

 

Sincerely,

Jim Chambers

I have a cozumel refrigerator magnet on my fridge. It shows a blatantly fake-looking

composite image showing a wall, a shark, come pacific soft corals, and in the foreground, a few clownfish in an anemone :-).

Jim,

I agree with you completely, ignorance is probably the culprit. If you have ever read and believed the travel articles in some dive magazines, you have been had. Many dive magazines base feature articles on advertising contracts (buy x number of full page adds and receive 2 feature articles per year) Some travel writers conduct phone interviews with dive operators and then write 1st person "I was there" articles for a destination they have never been to, and the use photos supplied by the operator for general coverage of shops and facilities and stock photos for the fish close-ups and walls. When I was living and working in Mexico we had such articles writen about our operation listing dive sites that didn't exist, and marine life encounters that didn't happen, even over our protests to the magazine.

Buyer beware, if it sounds too good to be true....

Doug

In 1996, my wife/dive buddy and I went to a brand new dive resort on Provo (Turks & Caicos Islands) that had been running full-page ads in the dive magazines for moths. They advertised a deluxe dive operation with state-of-the-art dive boats and everything geared toward divers, including a "valet" dive service where you never had to carry or wash your gear - they would do it for you.

When we arrived, guess what? During construction, they had changed the concept completely to an upscale beach resort, with deep carpets and expensive-looking marble statuary everywhere - and NO dive operation! Instead, they put us with a dive operator up the beach who picked us up in the morning in a dilapidated old yellow schoolbus. They didn't have any space to store our gear, so every day we had to schlep our own gear to and from the room (and we had to wash it ourselves). Most of the guests were not divers - they were in fact the feared and dreaded "Beautiful People" - and everyone looked at us like some kind of hooligans as we dripped water all over the lobby when we returned from diving each day.

The really outrageous thing is that the resort continued running the same ads in the dive magazines for six months or so after we returned. No telling how many divers got sucked into this false advertising. We complained loudly, and we ended up getting a refund for the diving, but the prices were so high in the resort restaurant that we lost most of the refund in the meals!

So blatantly false advertising really ticks me.

From what I have been reading a couple of months ago, the Seychelles tourism agency was caught using pictures from the Maldives and Polynesia to illustrate its official brochures. 

I think it was Bermuda with fish from the Pacific also in a widely publicized incident. Of course, they get all that free advertising when the media picked it up, so maybe there's a method to their madness.

Jack

JUST TO GET A BIT OF CLOSURE HERE, I EMAILED THE ADVERTISER AGAIN THIS MORNING AND THREATENED TO COMPLAIN TO ASTA (AMERICAN SOCIETY OF TRAVEL AGENTS) AND THE MAJOR DIVE PUBLICATIONS. THIS AFTERNOON, I GOT THIS RESPONSE:

Thank you for your interest in travel to Mexico! I do apologize about

not being contacted in a timely manner. As you are probably aware, we

have received numerous complaints about the advertisement. We have

contacted our ad agency and the other people responsible about the ad.

Again we do apologize about the mistake and appreciate your notifying us

of this problem. If you should require further personal assistance,

please call us at 800-44-MEXICO. Thank you, Mexico Tourism Board.

Sincerely,

Jose C.

From what I have been reading a couple of months ago, the Seychelles tourism agency was caught using pictures from the Maldives and Polynesia to illustrate its official brochures. 

 

Jack I would be interested in reading the info about Seychelles...

BTW You WILL find a lot of fish in Seychelles that you find in Maldives as the outer islands especially (Where no one goes) are identical in coraline build.

For generic marketing the brochures are irrelevent and not really aimed at fish experts or even divers.

I found one company in Manado a few years ago using my Cuban Silky Shark shots on its brochures... I just laughed my ass off!

Jack I would be interested in reading the info about Seychelles...

 

BTW You WILL find a lot of fish in Seychelles that you find in Maldives as the outer islands especially (Where no one goes) are identical in coraline build.

 

For generic marketing the brochures are irrelevent and not really aimed at fish experts or even divers.

 

I found one company in Manado a few years ago using my Cuban Silky Shark shots on its brochures... I just laughed my ass off!

I cannot remember the details but it was on my way to the Seychelles in March, so either onboard BA flight CAI-LHR or LHR-NBO-SEZ.

The article was mentioning land pictures AFAIK, which is even worse.

It happens.

A new dive op needed some brochure photos. They pulled stock photos from a pro. The pro was actually located in the same location as the dive op. But, alas, the selection was done by corporate in NY, the people putting together the brochure, none of whom dived. They picked out some nice pretty coral shots.

Of course, the pretty coral shots were taken in Fiji. The dive op was in the Caribbean. The brochure lasted one season.