Cheeky YouTube video aims to lure gay tourists

A humorous 45-second video that suggests but doesn’t actually depict daytime sex between two male calèche drivers in Old Montreal has attracted more than 4,500 views on YouTube – and a single emailed

A humorous 45-second video that suggests but doesn’t actually depict daytime sex between two male calèche drivers in Old Montreal has attracted more than 4,500 views on YouTube – and a single emailed complaint calling it “inappropriate,” according to the tourism-promotion agency behind it.

The English-language ad, titled Dave Does Montreal, is part of an online advertising campaign with a $50,000 budget launched Oct. 20 by Tourism Montreal and expected to last one month.

In the video, a young male narrator stands in the foreground, extolling the city’s architecture, cuisine, chic boutique hotels, ambience and other attributes.

While he talks, it becomes apparent some sort of vigorous, rhythmic activity is taking place in one of two horse-drawn carriages parked behind him.

About two-thirds of the way into the ad, the physical rocking stops and two men emerge from the calèche. One is clearly dishevelled, with his shirt askew; he gets into the driver’s seat of the second calèche. The other man adjusts his pants then lowers the caléche roof, which had been shielding their activity.

The ad is part of an initiative that has helped boost the annual number of gay and lesbian visitors to Montreal in the past decade to an estimated 450,000 from 300,000, said Pierre Bellerose, Tourism Montreal’s vice-president of research, development and public relations. Such tourists account for six per cent of the total 7.5 million visitors a year, he said.

Gays account for roughly 10 per cent of tourism spending locally, or about $250 million a year, Bellerose said.

The ad is directed at the North American market outside Quebec, he added.

To see the video, log on to http://tinyurl.com/5og8zs

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Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

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