No Love Lost, Beachcomber Style

Every time we editors write a story about one city wooing a Tradeshow Week 200 show away from another city, we wish we could have been flies on the wall. Typically, by the time the story gets to us, it's been sanitized to the point where the statements of both the winning and losing CVB heads are as sweet and complimentary as anything to come out of the mouths of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in recent weeks.

So it comes as somewhat of a surprise that when one well-known Eastern Seaboard beach resort got caught by another one in what is being termed a lapse of Internet ad ethics, etiquette has gone out the window.

If someone were to Google Virginia Beach, Va., one of the first ads to pop up is a pitch for Myrtle Beach, S.C. Fair enough, you say. In the world of search ads, it's every Web crawler for itself.

However, click through to the ad and your eye is drawn to a headline that reads, “Myrtle Beach: The Ideal Alternative to Virginia Beach Vacations.” You can go on to learn that Myrtle Beach is “more relaxing, has more thrills and is easier on the wallet” than Virginia Beach.

There's more, but you get the point.

In a letter to the Myrtle Beach Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, Virginia Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau President and CEO Jim Ricketts said its competitor had broken the unwritten rule that destinations don't attack one another in their marketing efforts, its actions were “unethical” and “unfair,” and he wanted the ad taken down immediately.

As of TSW's press time, the ad remained up – and, like Ricketts and his reputation-tainted Virginia Beach, we're still waiting for something else from Myrtle Beach that civilized society used to expect: a returned phone call.