Member Article

Canada steals North East beach

A tourism board in Canada has come under fire after using images of a beach in Northumberland to promote their province. Alberta may be more than 5,000 miles away and land-locked, but that didn’t stop advertising executives from using shots of a beach in Northumberland in their campaign.

The five-second clip, featuring a boy and a girl running through sand dunes and tall grass, with the North Sea in the background, has been included in an ad as part of a re-branding initiative organised by Alberta’s public affairs bureau.

However, the area in the picture is not Alberta, but believed to be Beadnell Bay in Northumberland.

Sheelagh Caygill, marketing executive at Northumberland Tourism, said the exposure was testament to the natural beauty of the area and has come at a time when the region is working to continue the holiday industry’s recent boom.

She said: “We think it’s quite funny. A landlocked province in Canada, presenting an image of itself as an island. But Northumberland Tourism is actually really thrilled that a picture of a beach in our area is being used for the Alberta campaign. “I hope that when people in Alberta realise where the beach is, they’ll come to visit.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .