Geysers? They have geysers?

ISLAND OF ADVENTURE is the headline of an article – and I’m using the term “article” loosely here – in an advertising supplement of yesterday’s Tribune. A travel ad supplement also featuring items on usual-suspect destinations like Jamaica and Italy. Usually I wouldn’t bother with it. Too many real articles in the world worth reading.

But the island in question is Iceland, and the Iceland Tourist Board must have sponsored the article, so I thought I’d take a look. Iceland’s an ambition of mine, has been for quite a while, especially since friends of mine visited last year and reported ethereal landscapes.

The opening graph is so amazingly awful that I have to quote it here in full:

“Here’s you: looking for fun, seeking something different, ready for a new adventure. Beaches? Been there, done that. Bed & breakfast slash antiquing slash wine festival? Please. You’ve got energy to spare, adrenaline to burn. If a need for outdoor action and high adventure is your fever, the only cure is Iceland.”

I like that spelling out of “slash.” I could improve it, though: Bed & breakfast… slash! antiquing… I want to slash! At the wine festival, slash them all! Sure, go to the wine festival, but don’t stay at the Bates Motel.

It doesn’t get much better after the first graph, and it’s painfully obvious that the writer may or may not have ever been to Iceland. It wouldn’t matter if he or she hadn’t. Even more intriguing is that possible outdoor adventures in Iceland are discussed in exactly two paragraphs – one of which is about the famed Blue Lagoon geothermal spa – while six paragraphs are given over to hotels, shopping, music and fine dining in Reykjavik.

The last graph gives the game away, however: “For a true escape, you need to abandon the same old, same old. Get yourself to Iceland this fall and winter and challenge yourself.”

So that’s it. Marketing Iceland in the fall and winter. Good luck to the Iceland Tourist Board with that. Must be hard enough in the summer. They should have arranged to trade names with Greenland years ago if they wanted to get any traction with potential visitors who don’t know their asses from a geyser in the ground. Which seems to be the target market for ISLAND OF ADVENTURE.