Brazil’s image problem for the Olympics: Violence. Latest: Football referee stabs player to death, fans behead referee

Brazil is hosting the 2014 World Cup and the Olympics in 2016, but so far all the world has seen is video of massive protests and shootouts between paramilitary police and drug gangs. With this latest horrific incident of a double murder at an amateur football match, Olympic and World Cup personnel must be wondering what they have got themselves into.

Let’s skip the Olympics and World Cup and spend a nice quiet vacation in Barbados instead, shall we dear?

South American Football – Referee beheaded by fans for killing player

There were absolutely horrific scenes at an amateur football match in Brazil when spectators lynched a referee and put his head on a stake after he had killed a player.

The barely believable incident happened in Maranhao, Brazil, last Sunday.

“Every black man should come down one time to Brazil… to see how this culture treats you. It’s incredible!”

“Women are noticing that their men are crossing the borders to find happiness…”

“I come down to Brazil. Young lady places a drink in front of me, opens my straw, puts it in my glass and I’m chillin’. Doesn’t make her less of a woman, doesn’t make me more of a man.”

Talk ya talk…

“Upstanding Black Men(with no criminal record) are, for the most part, under-appreciated and undervalued by American Black Women. It’s insane to think that Black Men should have a doomed existence. God is too good for that. Like it or not Black Women, YOU made it this way. Brazil is a Black Man’s heaven on Earth. Good luck trying to get a white man so your “children can have ‘good hair'”, remember all that hurtful talk ‘sistas’? We do, vividly! VIVA BRAZIL!”

“LOL That sounds like a bitter statement.. Don’t hate, congratulate. Why is it that bitter blackwoman always use the gay/downlow card when they see Black men happy without them? But when some sisters date white man and talk about how all us brothers ain’t shit it makes the mainstream media. Talk about double standard. 99.9 of black in America (only in america) are not marriage material. But they have no problem making babies out of wedlock with a bum ass nigga.”

Posted by Cliverton – single and exceedingly happy!

Rio De Janeiro explodes as police battle Brazil’s slum gangs

or… “Why Brazilians would like a Barbados vacation”

You know, this business of Barbados tapping into the huge Brazilian tourism market might be the right move at the right time – even started if a little later than we should have.

Picture yourself as an upper-middle class couple in Rio De Janeiro. Time for a vacation and you’d like to get away from it all to someplace fairly nearby and different from any place you’ve traveled before.

You visit the BTA’s Portuguese language website: VisiteBarbados.com

Barbados? Sounds good to me right about now…

Dilma Rousseff about to be elected as Brazil’s first female President. Meanwhile, in Barbados…

If the polls and pundits are correct

… a former Marxist urban guerrilla who was arrested and tortured by the military government in 1970 is about to be elected as the first female President of the South American powerhouse known as Brazil.

With Brazil having a population of 200 million, incredible resources and an economy that is on the rise unlike most other countries, 63 year old grandmother Dilma Rousseff will arguably become the most powerful woman in the world. This is all the more remarkable because Ms. Rousseff was diagnosed in April of 2009 with lymphatic cancer – which is “under control” according to her party.

Hopefully the BHTA, BTA and some of our other leaders will get those congratulatory letters composed and all ready to go. It doesn’t hurt to be first to offer best wishes, you know – because it shows that Barbados cares about Brazil. (Hey, who in the neighbourhood wouldn’t care? Brazil has 200 million people and they are practically within waving distance. I can’t believe it took over ten years to put up a Portuguese language tourism website and welcome signs at Grantley Adams but that’s another story.)

The Sydney Morning Herald has an excellent article that explains why Brazil is so important right now and how Ms. Rousseff has the backing of retiring President Lula da Silva: Steamroller push for next Brazilian President

Does Barbados elect enough women to Parliament?

Inspired by Ms. Rousseff’s impending election, we also want to take the opportunity to compare the number of women elected as Members of Parliament in Barbados with a few other countries.

Brazil – Barbados GOL flight a tremendous achievement!

Just for the record, I would like to applaud all those involved in securing the direct non-stop flight from GOL flight from Sao Paulo including the Minister of Tourism, BTA, Barbados Diplomatic Corp and BHTA.

It is a tremendous achievement, and I believe it offers the very best option in terms of route, carrier, duration of flight, connecting city possibilities and gateway.

From comments made by the Minister in the media, he is not expecting every flight to be full in the initial operating period, and however sceptical some may be about this foray into South America, this is in my humble opinion is a very realistic approach.

Did the Barbados Tourism Authority issue a tender for the design and hosting of www.visitebarbados.com?

Kammie Holder picks up on a story broken by Barbados Free Press and asks some additional questions. A good take in this weeks’ Swimming Upstream,  but we’d like to know if Kammie tried to credit BFP for breaking the story and The Nation editors quashed it. (That’s okay, Kammie. We still love ya no matter.)

After 10 years and 9 months of inaction Barbados Tourism Authority pays for a Portuguese language website… but we don’t own it!

We paid for it, but Barbados doesn’t own the website Domain name!

The Barbados Tourism Authority finally launched a Portuguese-language website to attract visitors from Brazil. This is in conjunction with the start of airline flights by GOL (Varig) direct from San Paulo to Barbados and a major campaign by Barbados to tap into this tourism market.

We can’t read Portuguese, but the new website (www.visitebarbados.com) looks professional, attractive and hopefully will do its part in bringing thousands of Brazilian tourists to our little paradise.

Adrian Loveridge saw Brazilian tourism potential 10 years ago

Barbados Free Press started calling for a BTA Portuguese-language website in September of 2009, but hotel owners like Adrian Loveridge have been asking for Portuguese and Spanish language Barbados tourism websites for over 10 years. (See BFP’s September 23, 2009 article here)

The Barbados Government also recently held a big event for Brazilian travel agents and industry representatives so hopefully this will be a good start in tapping into some new markets that we desperately need. (See Caribbean Net News: Barbados launches Brazilian marketing campaign)

We’d love to hand out kudos and congratulations all around to the BTA and Minister of International Business and International Transport George Hutson – but it really shouldn’t have taken anywhere near this long to put up a website and that takes some of the good feelings away.

We notice that the domain name of http://www.visitebarbados.com was only registered on March 31, 2010, so it took the government over 6 freaking months from the time of our September article to reserve a website name. The website itself went active a few days ago on May 24, 2010.

Oh… one more thing…

We paid for the website, so why don’t we own it?

The Barbados Government and the Barbados Tourism Authority are paying for this Brazilian marketing campaign – but our website domain name belongs to one of the BTA consultants!

Gisele Abrahao of Brazil was hired by Barbados to make the project happen, but she registered our website domain “visitebarbados.com” in her own name. She personally owns it!

So typical of Barbados politicians and bureaucrats with no real business experience and unlimited government budgets… They arrange for the Barbados tax-payers to fund the development and all operational costs of a very valuable website, but someone else ends up owning it!

posted by Cliverton after a suggestion from reader “nevermind kurt”

Peach and Quiet first Barbados hotel to welcome Brazilian tourists to website

Hotel owner Adrian Loveridge gets by with a little help from his friends

Peach and Quiet Hotel is the first Bajan tourism establishment to welcome Brazilian tourists online in their native Portuguese language. Hotel owner Adrian Loveridge recently announced…

“Portuguese language translation up and running on Peach and Quiet website. Grateful thanks to Kathy at Axses Web Communications.”

The lack of Portuguese language capability at the websites of the Barbados Tourism Authority and various hotels and tourism attractions has become even more relevant since Industry Minister George Hutson announced in September 2009 that Barbados should expand its tourism and investment marketing to Latin America.

Almost six months later in February 2010, the Barbados government announced that GOL Airlines of Brazil would be making scheduled flights to Barbados. Frankly, we on the rock should be delighted to gain access to such a large and close market. Yup… we have access to a quarter of a billion people today that we didn’t have access to a couple of months ago.

So did the Barbados Tourism Authority put up a welcome page for Brazilian visitors in their native Portuguese language?

You mek sport, my friend! That would take vision, leadership and (worst of all) work! We’ve been begging BTA to put up a Portuguese welcome page since September. Adrian Loveridge and other small hotel owners have been asking the same thing of BTA for ten years. The result: NADA.

So Adrian called up his friends at Axses Web Communications and in a matter of a few days his Peach and Quiet hotel website had a quick and easy translation feature powered by Google. It’s not the elegant and preferred implementation of a parallel Peach and Quiet website translated into perfect Portuguese by a human – but it works. Most of all, it says to prospective guests from Brazil, “Peach and Quiet cares about your business.”

Once again a little guy just does it while the Barbados Tourism Authority queries their staff about whether they should schedule a meeting to discuss if they should call a meeting to discuss if it might be feasible to conduct a study to ascertain if a consultant should be hired to recommend whether a meeting should be called to hire a consultant to investigate the feasibility of translating the Barbados Tourism Authority website into other languages and what languages should be considered. Phase two would be to convene a meeting to decide if the consultant’s contract should be extended to explore the hiring of a Portuguese translator, and whether it should be put to tender.

You think we’re joking about all of that. Trust us – we’re not.

Here’s what Adrian accomplished in a couple of days with a little help from his friends at Axses Web Communications…

Big excitement in Barbados over direct Brazil flights – but still no Portuguese language on Barbados Tourism Authority website after ten years

Why won’t the Barbados Tourism Authority get off it’s lazy ass and welcome BTA website visitors in Portuguese?

Sorry for the subtitle language, folks. I don’t know how to express the frustration of the entire Barbados tourism industry in any clearer manner.

Hotel owners have been asking the BTA to put up welcome pages in Portuguese and Spanish for over a decade. Tourism and Industry ministers under four different governments have talked about tapping into the huge tourism potential of Brazil and some of our other Central and South American neighbours for 17 years. Barbados spends millions upon millions of dollars every year in tourism marketing and subsidies but we haven’t got what it takes to put up a few webpages to say “Come to Barbados!” in the language that our prospective customers speak.

It just boggles the mind.

“Language is one of the strongest elements of Brazil’s national unity. Portuguese is spoken by nearly 99.9 percent of the population.”

… from Wikipedia’s entry on Brazil

Pointing out the BTA’s lack of Portuguese & Spanish website for five months

BFP started focusing on this one simple issue in our September 23, 2009 article: Idiocy! Government Minister Hutson says “Look to Latinos”, but Barbados Tourism Authority failed to establish Spanish, Portuguese language websites despite 10 years of begging by hotel owners

We followed up on November 6, 2009 with this story: Six weeks later: Still no Spanish, Portuguese language welcome on Barbados Tourism or Investment & Development websites.

“Its now over ten years since I pleaded with the BTA to place a Spanish and Portuguese language version on the national website, so at least some of those 400 million plus potential travelers could do the prior research or planning.
 Look on YouTube and you will see a Spanish version of a television ‘ad’ prepared for the BTA. Of course it was almost a waste of time and money because it contained no-call-to action (telephone number or website address).”

… Adrian Loveridge, private sector hotel owner, “Peach & Quiet Hotel” Barbados

What is it about the BTA that makes them unable to understand the importance of language in marketing?

The Barbados Tourism Authority should have established a Portuguese-language welcome page at the BTA website a decade ago. It’s a basic requirement for entering any tourism market: you have to be able to speak to your target audience. If you’re not willing to do that you are just pretending.

In the case of the BTA, they can do things ass-backwards because they’re playing with the never-ending buckets of our tax dollars and don’t have to show any measurable results. The BTA can make so many basic errors and nobody seems to call them on it.

This is just so stupid.

Our government went to the trouble and expense of lobbying for and facilitating scheduled flights between Brazil and Barbados, but can’t spend what amounts to rum-money to hire a translator to provide some basic information on the BTA website in Portuguese. We’re not even talking about hiring a Brazilian call center to answer questions by prospective tourists – but that’s pretty basic too.

Is there something I’m missing here? PLEASE tell me I’m wrong or crazy or something. Tell me I don’t understand tourism marketing. Explain to me why I should believe that our BTA people are doing the right things at the right time and they are not a bunch of idiots who are unable to make such a simple and low-cost, yet vital, addition to the BTA website.