Visit London is the flagship brand charged with attracting tourists to the capital, and in this we wish them well. But they do write some absolute bolx.
🎄 The one thing November does not mean is Christmas, Christmas is in December. I know the pre-Christmas season stretches further every year but "magical London Christmas" occurs in December, not the month before.
🎄 The arrival of November does not "only mean one thing". It means many things including fog, falling leaves, taking down your Hallowe'en decorations, fireworks, All Saints' Day, Movember, Thanksgiving and Jeremy Hunt's birthday.
🎄 If the arrival of November did mean only one thing, that thing would not be a magical London Christmas.
They made it worse in the accompanying 30 second promo video by featuring Winter Wonderland, Regent Street's illuminated angels, Christmas at Kew, Covent Garden's decorations and a churros stall of the kind you find at a pretend German market. This would not have been a problem except that the muppets slapped a caption on the video which said LONDON AS SOON AS NOVEMBER ARRIVES. But not a single one of these Christmas things is in place on 1st November, they all start later in the month, and this is the kind of hyperbolic white lie Visit London are absolutely excellent at.
Another example of their sloppiness is their list of "101 Christmas things to do in London", a list which starts off with Hogwarts In The Snow which as any fule know is in Hertfordshire. This was no careless slip, they doubled down with Windsor Castle at number 5, then threw in Stonehenge, Bath, Dover, Birmingham Christmas Market and Bicester Village for good measure. Anyone would think Visit London couldn't think of 101 Christmas things to do in London.
And fair enough, Visit London's target audience lives far enough away that they don't care whether Hogwarts is in London or not because it might as well be. But that doesn't excuse the team from pumping out inaccurate over-hyped claims, such as for example their regular overuse of the phrase "must visit".
Nothing in London is must-visit, especially not a bunch of gingerbread sheds, a converted horsebox flogging drinks and a few lights in a garden. I can assure the folk at Visit London that a London Christmas need not involve a trip to Kew Gardens in order to be complete. Christmas at Kew has only been running since 2013 and nobody ever felt their festive season was incomplete before it started. Also it has limited capacity so 95% of Londoners couldn't attend even if they wanted to. "X isn't complete without Y" is the kind of lazy phrase copywriters bash out when they've run out of better ideas.
I despair at the phrase "what better... than...", because it's invariably followed by something that's very easily beaten. In this case I think we can all think of something better than going to North Greenwich's teflon tent and filling a plastic tray with small flavoured chocolates. That's not to say you might not enjoy it but the claim was "there's nothing better" and there very much is. Seeing your favourite band, taking a world cruise or staying at home and stroking a kitten are all potentially much better than going to the back of an outlet mall and paying £15 for 300g of fatty gobbles.
Peak bolx might just be the insistence that visitors take a specific "must-do" walk.
It's accompanied by a minute-long video, the title of which is YOU NEED TO DO THIS CHRISTMAS LIGHTS WALK IN LONDON.
No you don't.
The walk "through five of London's iconic light displays" starts on Oxford Street ("the famous Sky Full of Stars"), turns into Regent Street ("these dramatic angels soar above red buses and taxis") and then enters Carnaby Street ("probably one of London's most vibrant areas"). You're then on your own to find a "picturesque stroll" between here and Covent Garden, before crossing Waterloo Bridge to end on the South Bank at the "cosy winter market". The lights there look feeble but hey, they sell gluhwein. The video's closing caption says MAKE SURE YOU SAVE THIS WALKING ROUTE FOR YOUR TRIP TO LONDON THIS CHRISTMAS, and I would argue whoever wrote that has an inflated opinion of their own importance.
Yesterday they added another "You have to take this walk when you’re next visiting London🙌" must-do video. This time it's a multiple river-crosser from Tower Bridge to Buckingham Palace which perversely prioritises Westminster Cathedral over Trafalgar Square, but rest assured you don't have to take that either.
And yes I know the average foreign tourist doesn't mind the exaggeration, they're more interested in seeing the iconic sights of the city, ideally for real. They're also highly unlikely to scroll back to an excitable tweet from months ago when they finally get round to visiting the city. All these trumped-up boasts will be quickly forgotten, if indeed they were ever noticed in the first place, and the must-walk walk will go unwalked.
But it really ought to be possible to write promotional copy without resorting to exaggerated claims, trite cliches and false superlatives. Most organisations manage it, bigging-up their brand without tipping into inaccurate hyperbole, whereas Visit London have a seemingly relentless passion for deliberate overstatement. And that can only mean one thing, you don't need to do this, a real must-not-do.
