Lithuania tourism chief quits over ads

Lithuania’s tourism chief was forced to resign yesterday after a state-funded ad campaign used photos from other countries to promote the Baltic state under the slogan “Real is Beautiful”.

The State Department of Tourism admitted that some of the pictures used on social media were taken in fellow European Union states Finland and Slovakia.

Lithuanian Facebook users flooded their feeds with hundreds of international pictures, describing them as Lithuanian sites and captioning them with the hashtag #realisbeautiful.

Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis joined the trend, posting the EU Commission’s Berlaymont building in central Brussels.

“From tomorrow, we start working in the new government building in Karoliniskes,” said his caption, referring to a residential suburb of the capital, Vilnius.

Hours later, the prime minister slammed the ad campaign as “fraudulent” and demanded an investigation.

The tourism department and local media agencies defended themselves, insisting the pictures from other countries were good enough to “communicate emotion”. Economy Minister Mindaugas Sinkevicius yesterday summoned tourism chief Jurgita Kazlauskiene who handed in her resignation, a ministry spokesman said.