The Ministry of Tourism plans to run an intense campaign to assure tourists that "it is still better in the Bahamas" after initial concerns proved false that several species of birds at Inagua may have died from the deadly Avian flu.
In a television interview last evening, Tourism Minister Obie Wilchcombe said the ministry is scrambling to disseminate the message that the deadly H5Nl virus was not to blame for the deaths, and that no trace of the virus is in the country.
This comes on the heels of reports from the Atlantis resort that the bookings and shares for their resort have slumped since the matter was reported by the international media.
"We do have our public relations teams around the world working right now, there has been passing of information right now to the wire services, getting it to the news organisations. We now have to spend more money to make sure that we get this message out there because what we are doing now is trying to clean up our own mess," he told ZNS last evening.
Mr Wilchcombe said, his ministry is working to clean up "the mess" the story created.
B2B News Editor's note: Mr. Wilchcombe would have less of a mess to clean up if he weren't so arrogant. He refuses to have his Ministry send updated information to the Bahamas' largest website, forcing us to print international reports instead of first-hand knowledge.
"We did this ourselves, no one else, it wasn't the American media who did it, it wasn't the British media or the media from the Caribbean it was ourselves who put this information out there. So now we have to go out and clean it all up."
Mr Wilchcombe, who is himself a former journalist, added, "We're not trying to tell the media don't do your work. Do your job but when I was a journalist, I was always told to check the story, check behind the story, check on the side of the story, check on top of the story to make sure that when I carried that story I didn't have to apologise for making a mistake.
"So we are going to run a very high intensive campaign to get the message out, no bird flu in the Bahamas. It's still better in the Bahamas and people should still come."
Source: The Tribune
