Addition & Subtraction in Tourism Promotion

Israel Tourist Authority "claims" extra land that it has; Michigan "forgets" one-third of its state

The back page of New Mexico magazine is called "One of Our 50 is Missing," filled with anecdotes and examples about people (some of them officials of some level of government) who think New Mexico is somehow part of Old Mexico rather than the United Sates. The license plate even includes USA to clarify in which country a vehicle is registered. That makesNew Mexico accurate and proactive in identifying itself.

Not so the state of Michigan and the State of Israel whose mistaken maps promoting tourism to their area had to be pulled or corrected.

The Associated Press reported on a kerfuffel caused after Michigan released a map without the Upper Peninsula, separated by two Great Lakes from the more populous lower section. AP noted that the "U.P., which is about the size of Denmark and bigger than nine U.S. states, only has 3% of the state's population" was missing from a map released by Michigan itself. The correct map is shown to the upper right.

Some "Yoopers," as U.P. residents call themselves, felt slighted last year when a state-sponsored tourism commercial only showed the more populous peninsula to the south. The TV ad was later fixed." U.P. residents, who refer to themselves as Yoopers, have legislaion on their side requiring their forested, rural portion of the state to be included on all oficial maps.

The AP report continued, "Last year, some high school students from Escanaba wrote to a textbook publisher after a map in a history book appeared to exclude the U.P. from the borders of the United States. The map colored the U.P. white — like the void surrounding the country — while the rest of Michigan was shaded light blue. The map identified states by their postal codes; the U.P. was designated "IL," for Illinois — which had no label. Other maps have shown the U.P. as part of Wisconsin or Canada.

Meanwhile, across he Atlantic, a poster promoting visitation to Israel was withdrawn by a UK truth-in-advertising watchdog called the Advertising Standards Authority after 442 people complained that a map on the poster (lower right) shows the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights as part of Israel. According to a report in The Guardian, the Tourism Ministry responded that the map was "a general schematic tourism and travel map, rather than a political map."