Ottawa mayor Mark Sutcliffe has responded to a supposed study conducted by the aggregate website King Casino Bonus that ranked Ottawa as one of the world’s “most overrated cities” for tourists.
The site’s ranking, based on an aggregate of obscure star ratings, listed Ottawa as the 60th most overrated city in the world, which didn’t sit well with Sutcliffe. He took to Twitter to express his disappointment.
“I don’t normally comment on stories like this, but the headline, the article, and the study itself are misleading and also missing the point,” Sutcliffe wrote on Twitter. “I’ve heard from a number of people in Ottawa who share my view. So I feel compelled to come to the defence of our city.”
In the following tweets, Sutcliffe questioned the legitimacy of the list’s criteria for being overrated and added that “any list that says Miami, London, Paris, and Tokyo are in the top 10 most overrated cities must be flawed.”
Sutcliffe also criticized the list’s framing before concluding that Ottawa should be proud that it is a top tourist destination. He concluded by scoffing at the list and urging Ottawans to unify and continue to “convince the world how beautiful and welcoming Ottawa is to visitors and residents.”
Following Sutcliffe’s Twitter rant, things got weirder.
PressProgress editor Luke LeBrun noticed Sutcliffe’s anger towards the list and started his own thread explaining the origins of the website and dove into its unusual origins.
LeBrun continued to explain the weirdness of the King Casino Bonus site by questioning its content, business model, and lack of verified contacts to reach out to. He then found their Twitter account, which was seemingly left for dead and discovered that “3 of the 5 ‘experts’ at the British organization were based in Romania.”
In his subsequent tweets, LeBrun found out that the site was not British as many Canadian publications had reported and that the site’s spokesperson introduced himself to LeBrun as Ionut Marin of Bucharest, Romania, who had his foot in a company that focused on SEO and online gambling.
LeBrun concluded his thread by saying that Extremoo’s owner stopped replying to him and he had told him that Sutcliffe had denounced the list on Twitter.
“Your guess is as good as mine as to what this Romanian digital marketing company is up to,” LeBrun wrote in his final tweet of the thread.
