On January 7, 2015, the city of Brussels launched its #CallBrussels campaign, which aimed to “convince tourists that Brussels is still a destination of choice.” A press release explained that “there has been a noticeable decline in the number of foreign tourists in the Brussels-Capital Region since the infamous ‘Brussels lockdown.’ This decline has serious consequences, particularly for players in the tourist industry. visit.brussels is launching the #CallBrussels campaign in order to reassure tourists and to convince them that Brussels is still a destination of choice.”
The “infamous Brussels lockdown” the PR item referred to was the precursor of the real thing, a November 21, 2015 lockdown that imposed a de facto martial law on Brussels immediately following the ISIS Paris attack. This earlier lockdown followed the May 24, 2014 attack on the Jewish Museum, when four people were killed in a shooting. The lockdown took place in September, 2014, and resulted in Belgian prosecutors picking up 46 members of the Islamist group Sharia4Belgium, accused of belonging to a terrorist organization and brainwashing young men in Belgium into fighting a holy war in Syria. They were all convicted in Feb. 2015.
But being successful in rounding up and convicting terrorists does not necessarily sound inviting to tourists looking to spend their two weeks off someplace nice and civilized, which Brussels used to be. Or, as the PR piece put it: “Over the past few weeks, the international media have portrayed Brussels as a war zone that tourists would do well to avoid. This has obviously had dire consequences for the tourist sector, which is currently experiencing a noticeable decline. Yet life goes on, and the European capital is as packed as ever with tourist and cultural activities. With the international #CallBrussels campaign, visit.brussels aims to convince tourists intending to visit Brussels that there is no reason to revise their travel plans.”
It was, actually, a very clever idea, the kind of clever idea that can easily end up killing people, and may have done so on Brussels’ bloody Tuesday. “Who better than the people of Brussels to answer the questions that tourists hesitant about travelling to Brussels might have…” wondered the campaign’s PR. And here’s what they came up with a plan. The original video has been removed from YouTube, so a big hat tip to BravoNolan who ran his own copy, peppered with fresh cuts from Tuesday’s nightmare:
“In order to foster exchanges between the main players of tourism in Brussels (namely tourists from the following countries: France, the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain) and the people of Brussels, visit.brussels set up telephone boxes in three emblematic locations of the Brussels-Capital Region: at the Mont des Arts, on the Place Flagey and on the Place Communale in Molenbeek. Passers-by will be able to answer questions from foreign tourists, who can choose which telephone box to call via the website www.call.brussels, and a webcam will film the surroundings. The interactions will be broadcast live on the website www.call.brussels.
“The people of Brussels are proud of their Region and are no doubt eager to re-establish the truth regarding the situation in Brussels. Through this action, visit.brussels gives them the possibility of expressing themselves on the topic and of revitalizing the economic life of Brussels by persuading tourists not to cancel their trip to the city.”
We were wondering if there were any calls recorded on Call.Brussels last Tuesday, while the city was under terrorist siege. It turned out that on Tuesday, the warning below is what you got if you ventured into call.brussels. However, by Wednesday at noon, some busy Belgian installed a redirect code on the page that takes curious visitors to a website called Visit.Brussels. Still, the cached website from a year ago can be found here.