A bunch of farmers

A few blog posts ago, I addressed the importance of narratives in tourism, which addressed the fact that the way that people look at a place they visit is influenced by stories and images they see and hear from that placeI talked about how people might see Groningen in a positive way, but there also might be a negative image to Groningen, caused by narratives. The way that this negative image is implanted in peoples' minds is mostly through (social) media.

In recent years, a few problems in Groningen have made it to the local news. The biggest and most recent scoop is on the earthquakes in the north of the province. Due to the harvesting of gas by the gas company (the NAM), there have been a lot of earthquakes caused by the subsidence caused by the shrinking of the underground gas bubble. A lot of reporters from national TV rushed to Groningen to interview the commoners on the streets. Many of those reporters, especially from networks like POWNED, succeed to interview the most 'simple-minded' people, thus reinforcing the negative stereotype of the people in Groningen.

In my experience, this actually has an impact on the public opinion about Groningen. Whenever I go to, for instance, Amsterdam, and I tell people that I'm from Groningen, some of them start laughing and ask me if I'm a farmer, because 'it's all just a bunch of farmers up there right?'.

Now back to the tourism side. I think that this negative image of Groningen has a negative effect on the entire province, including tourism. A negative image means that a lot of people will not come and visit Groningen because they don't see it as a place worth visiting, it's not seen as a highlight of the Netherlands. That's a shame, because it's just so pretty!

cracks in the wall due to earthquakes (source: radartv.nl)

sources:

http://nos.nl/artikel/2060507-het-noorden-is-vaker-opgeschrikt-door-zware-aardbevingen.html

http://www.rtvnoord.nl/nieuws/81762/Leegloop-Noord-en-Oost-Groningen-kost-miljard-euro