Faro Airport - Escape the confusion

Slating your local area as a way of encouraging residents to escape somewhere else might not be the best approach for an airport. However this is what Faro Airport, in Portugal’s Algarve region, did in July.

In a now deleted Instagram post, Faro Airport encouraged fans to “escape the Algarve confusion” and head for Marseille in the South of France instead.

According to The Portugal News, in the ensuing controversy, the Portuguese Government got involved after Parliamentary deputies in the region complained.

The Ministry of Infrastructure and Housing asked ANA (the national airport operator) to remove the post, as well as to provide an explanation. Meanwhile the President of the Algarve Tourism Association put out a statement, condemning the post.

This is a good example of how something quite small, in this case an Instagram post, can blow up into something much bigger.

The person who posted the image probably thought he or she was simply stating the obvious, that as a tourist hotspot the Algarve does indeed become extra crowded in the Summer (though it’s questionable whether the South of France is any better).

However, it’s a good reminder that customer facing organisations, not only airports and airlines, need to have some kind of sanity checking process in place, as well as guidelines.

Another example of social media gone wrong involved KLM India, which posted a tweet about the safest place to sit if you want to survive a crash, as part of a weekly trivia campaign offering followers “exciting” prizes. The airline was forced to apologise and delete the tweet (via Business Insider)