Georgia Publisher Jumbles Florida Tourism Brochure

Tampa Tribune

As if the shadow of the Gulf oil spill crisis isn't giving Florida tourism enough of a hard time, a Georgia travel publisher botched a 16-page brochure of Visit Florida which gave bad directions, reorganized the Florida map and misnamed tourist attractions.



Officials are furious with the company for printing the obvious errors in the Florida tourism brochure that was stuffed into 1.7 million Florida newspapers last Sunday, according to the Tampa Tribune.



The brochure showed Clearwater Beach located in northern Florida, the Salvador Dali Museum in Tampa instead of St. Petersburg and got its sports teams mixed up misnaming Tampa's baseball's Tampa Bay Rays as the Devil Rays. It also incorrectly referred to the city of St. Pete Beach as "St. Petersburg Beach," a name that hasn't been used since it was formally changed in 1994.



"It's most unfortunate, it's in there for God and everybody to see," Collinson founder Newt Collinson told the paper. "I'm sure we proofed it three times. It was an honest mistake."



Kathy Torian, Corporate Communications Manager for Visit Florida, admitted that they failed to proofread the brochure before placing their VisitFlorida.com labels on each page and mailing them out.