A European travel company is facing heavy criticism after posting a tasteless tweet on the social networking site, Twitter. The online travel company Groupalia did not think hard before writing a post related to recent earthquakes in Italy.
On May 20, north-central Italy was struck by a 6.0 earthquake that left seven people dead. On Tuesday, the area was hit again with a 5.8 earthquake which destroyed several buildings and killed 17 people so far.
Just two and a half hours after Tuesday's earthquake, Groupalia, which specializes in holidays packages, tweeted "Afraid of the earthquake? Drop everything and run away to Santo Domingo," according to reports.
The tacky tweet set off a storm of followers who were angry over the company's attempt to make a profit from a devastating event shortly after it occurred. The company soon deleted the tweet and tried to apologize. An hour later they wrote "We apologize for the wrong tweet on the earthquake. It was not our intention to offend anyone."
Groupalia's attempt at an apology was not enough to satisfy outraged followers. A marketing specialist replied "Too late for an apology. It was not an accident, it was profiteering."
The company then tried to redeem themselves, but wound up digging themselves into a deeper hole. They wrote another tweet saying that they would donate one euro from every purchase made on its Italian website on Tuesday to the victims of the earthquake.
This added more fuel to the fire and outraged followers who thought that the company was still trying use the earthquake to sell their products. Hundreds of tweets were written in response. Groupalia was higher on Twitter's trending topic list in Italy than the earthquake itself.
Once again, this tweet was soon removed. The company then took to another social media site, Facebook, to offer a more formal apology.
The company's country manager, Andrea Gualtieri, wrote "I am really appalled at what happened and apologize to the people affected by the earthquake." She apologized for the company's attempt to benefit from the news of the earthquake and se went on to say that the company would be making a donation to the Italian Red Cross.
Groupalia is among a few other companies that have made mistakes in response to tragedies. In January, American Express was forced to apologize after releasing a travel brochure that invited readers to indulge in a European vacation on board the Costa Concordia, which had crashed the previous day, resulting in over 30 deaths.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
