{"id":26259,"date":"2013-07-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-02T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/26259\/tourism-ministrys-new-ad-in-denial-or-just-being-real"},"modified":"2023-08-30T07:24:18","modified_gmt":"2023-08-30T07:24:18","slug":"tourism-ministrys-new-ad-in-denial-or-just-being-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/en\/26259\/tourism-ministrys-new-ad-in-denial-or-just-being-real\/","title":{"rendered":"Tourism Ministry&#8217;s New Ad: In Denial or just Being Real?"},"content":{"rendered":"  <iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/byk42UxVeng\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>  <br \/>  <br \/>  \u201cThey say stay away from Lebanon, but is there anything more beautiful than Lebanon?\u201d That&#8217;s the central message behind a new ad released by the Ministry of Tourism on Monday in a fresh effort to convince travelers that this country &#8212; caught in the middle of a heated political summer, a war next door in Syria and the violent antics of a wayward sheikh &#8212; is still worth visiting.<br \/>  <br \/>  To the casual observer, the ministry&#8217;s commercial could come off as a giant dose of denial. But hear it from a local first, folks: you have to take into account the fact that Lebanon is pretty much on the potential brink of chaos year-round. It&#8217;s not like a seasonal thing. And for once, I&#8217;ve got to give the Tourism Ministry credit for not resorting to its usual, superficial portrayal of Lebanon, which involves the following components,  to be read in no particular order: boobies, boobies and more boobies.<br \/>  <br \/>  Instead, the one-minute ad begins with the soothing sounds of Fairouz&#8217;s song, &#8220;Ya Tayr&#8221; or &#8220;Oh Bird.&#8221; The music whisks us away to the best parts of Lebanon, highlighting the food, the sun, the sea and the mountains. The narrator even throws in (very oddly) the word &#8216;democracy&#8217; for good measure. Fear not, travelers! We have democracy!<br \/>  <br \/>  They say don&#8217;t come to Lebanon, but if you&#8217;re brave enough to make it over (and trust us, it&#8217;s really not that bad &#8211; despite the current travel warnings from the US, UK and most of the countries in the Gulf), then check out our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/l\/23062\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\">Insider&#8217;s Guide to Beirut<\/a> along with a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/TouristAttractions\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\">handy page pointing you to all of Lebanon&#8217;s major tourist attractions<\/a>.<br \/>  <br \/>  Yeah, that was a shameless self-promotion. But so what? Our website is legitimately awesome.<br \/>  <br \/>  Bon voyage, peeps.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThey say stay away from Lebanon, but is there anything more beautiful than Lebanon?\u201d That&#8217;s the central message behind a new ad released by the Ministry of Tourism on Monday in a fresh effort to convince travelers that this country &#8212; caught in the middle of a heated political summer, a war next door in Syria and the violent antics of a wayward sheikh &#8212; is still worth visiting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":450309,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ai_generated_summary":"","_preview_accessed":0,"footnotes":""},"tags":[347],"media-embed-type":[],"class_list":["post-26259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-trending"],"authorship":[170],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized 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