The City of San Francisco, California, has launched a new video ad campaign in a desperate effort to attract tourists back after years of rampant crime, homelessness and urban decay plaguing the city.
The ad, which is part of a “massive $6 million ad campaign,” shows a polished version of San Francisco to make it more appealing to tourists, including various landmarks like Union Square, which has been plagued by store closings due to soaring crime.
Watch
The Chronicle reports:
The ads will appear in New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Boston, and Houston markets, running through Oct. 22.
The campaign will also include digital advertising in Australia, India, the Asian Pacific region, Europe, Canada, and Mexico. And a U.S. travel giveaway contest featuring five local experiences will be held in the coming months. It’s expected to reach 193 million people.
The campaign follows a partial recovery in tourism last year, with spending more than doubling compared with 2021 to $7.4 billion.
Major conferences and events, like Dreamforce and the Outside Lands music festival, returned in full force. But a slew of high-profile crime incidents this year and a string of retail closures in the tourist-heavy Powell Street area have dampened the city’s image as the busy summer travel season arrives.
Earlier this week, San Francisco residents and business owners decried the city’s growing drug and crime problem, with some describing it as a “Zombie apocalypse.”
As The Daily Fetched reported:
One resident, Seema Gokhale, told Fox News that life in the city is “post-apocalyptic.”
“It honestly feels like I’m in a place that’s been in a zombie apocalypse. It’s like a dystopia. It really feels like a dystopian reality right now where I see boarded-up storefronts. I see people defecating on the streets,” Gokhale said.
According to a new report from the San Francisco Controller’s office, almost half of the city’s commercial sidewalks had feces on them in 2021 and 2022.
“I walk by people regularly, and it feels horrible,” Gokhale said because drug addicts have “needle tracks all over their arms and legs and toes. I see people with rotting limbs because they’re living on the streets.”
Watch
One resident who owns a security business in San Francisco says he has trouble recognizing the city he grew up in, which now resembles a “Zombie apocalypse.”
“It went from a family-friendly city to just rampant robbery, theft, assault. It is lawlessness out there, and there’s a lot of homelessness.”
“The mindset is changing for the Asian community there. They’re probably realizing that the leftist [policies] are not working, and it’s eroding away family values,” he explained.
WATCH: San Francisco Mayor’s Speech on “Crime” Cut Short as Activist Commits Violent Crime
San Francisco is a joke.
I feel like I’d rather be stabbed in the gut by a monkeypox victim than go to San Francisco. I’d have smaller chance of dying or catching aids.