Manny Pacquiao is most famous for being the world’s best pound-for-pound boxer. Right below that, he’s famous for being the world’s best pound-for-pound boxer who’s also a prominent politician. The athlete first ran for the Filipino House of Representatives in 2007, was elected in 2009, and has been serving his country in an official capacity ever since. Now he’s taking the next step in boosting the nation’s image by potentially serving as the face of the island nation’s next tourism campaign.
The Philippines saw its tourism industry take a hit in 2009 on account of the kind of weather that you usually only find in the Bible, and only when God got particularly angry. Things got worse in 2010, with terrorism warnings throughout the year and an August hostage crisis ending with the death of eight Hong Kong tourists plus the hostage taker. Efforts to repair the country’s reputation have been rocky, culminating last week with a new tourism site that had to be immediately withdrawn because the url was an almost letter-for-letter copy of a porn site. Even worse, the porn site had the usual English spelling of “filipina,” the tourism site not so much.
So now it’s back to the drawing board for the Philippines tourism board. Pacquiao got the question about helping out when he returned to his home country last week, and he seemed on board. On one hand that’s a hopeful sign for the Philippines, since he really is famous and smart tourism campaigns can somewhat rebrand countries (*cough* Mexico *cough*).
On the other hand we wouldn’t be surprised to see the tourism board buy a Superbowl ad and then end up misspelling Pacquiao’s name. It’s the kind of thing they do.
