NEWS: Obscure Balkan Country Does Something Kind of Icky

With fierce competition, the hotel industry is constantly inventing new marketing tricks to attract guests. Now some people are accusing Belgrade hotelier Dusan Zabunovic of going too far with his latest gimmick.



Zabunovic renovated a property opposite Belgrade's central train station, with the help of some of the best designers in the country. He named the hotel Mr. President and designed each room around a current or past world leader.

. . .

In addition to the Bushes, Margaret Thatcher, Fidel Castro and Joseph Stalin, there is also a junior suite named after the infamous Adolf Hitler.

The Hitler or room 501, occupied mainly by German, Croat and Slovenian guests, sees the highest demand, according to Zabunovic.

"It is wrong not to have Hitler in Madame Tussaud and other museums," he told ABC News. "All his victims would turn in their graves if nowhere it is reminded what a monstrous criminal he was."

punk said:
No one's pissed off about Stalin's suite? If I recall correctly, he was responsible for the deaths of millions of Soviets...

But bad taste, to be sure.

malkav11 said:
But I think part of that is that Stalin and Mao's violence, by and large, was in service of comprehensible motives: maintaining power and domination. Hitler's "Final Solution" was utter racist lunacy.

mingol said:
What's more distrubing than the theme itself is that the room has become the hotel's most in-demand.

OlafTheTroll said:

"Occupied mainly by German, Croat and Slovenian guests."

Who'da thunk?

punk said:
No one's pissed off about Stalin's suite? If I recall correctly, he was responsible for the deaths of millions of Soviets...

But bad taste, to be sure.

Zarth said:

Yeah, kind of embarrassing to be us right now, isn't it?

strndniowa said:
It is somewhat more disturbing that it seems to be a popular room in Europe....I would think that would be too close to home for most Europeans....

strndniowa said:

Totally off subject- it wasn't that long ago that Chevrolet marketed the Nova in Mexico, which apparently translates into "No go" in spanish....
.

For starters, nova and no va don't sound alike and are unlikely to be confused, just as "carpet" and "car pet" are unlikely to be confused in English. Additionally, no va would be an awkward way in Spanish to describe a nonfunctioning car (no funciona, among others, would do better), just as in English we'd be more likely to say "it doesn't run" than "it doesn't go."

Additionally, as in English, nova when used in a brand name can convey the sense of newness. There's even a Mexican gasoline that goes by that brand name, so it seems unlikely such a name alone could doom a car.

A logical analysis of the story would also indicate its unlikelihood: It strains credibility to believe that a company as large as General Motors, with marketing executives and other employees and contacts throughout the world, wouldn't be aware of a negative meaning of a product name. In fact, according to one marketing analyst (Cecelia Bouleau, quoted in Business Mexico magazine), GM marketers discussed the possibility of confusion with the name, but "they kept the name and it sold very well. ... I think that the word is sufficiently incorporated into the language as meaning 'new' as in 'bossa nova' that the criticism isn't valid."

Zarth said:

Moreso than you might think. The Second World War occasioned, in practice, a civil war in Yugoslavia between pro-Axis fascist governments and Communist partisans. There are still deep divisions in Balkan society about that, as in much of the rest of Eastern Europe. Anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe is another thing that they didn't really ever dispense with fully, much like racism in the United States.

Stiles said:

Yeah, that's bullshit. (snopes link)

From another

For starters, nova and no va don't sound alike and are unlikely to be confused, just as "carpet" and "car pet" are unlikely to be confused in English. Additionally, no va would be an awkward way in Spanish to describe a nonfunctioning car (no funciona, among others, would do better), just as in English we'd be more likely to say "it doesn't run" than "it doesn't go."

Additionally, as in English, nova when used in a brand name can convey the sense of newness. There's even a Mexican gasoline that goes by that brand name, so it seems unlikely such a name alone could doom a car.

A logical analysis of the story would also indicate its unlikelihood: It strains credibility to believe that a company as large as General Motors, with marketing executives and other employees and contacts throughout the world, wouldn't be aware of a negative meaning of a product name. In fact, according to one marketing analyst (Cecelia Bouleau, quoted in Business Mexico magazine), GM marketers discussed the possibility of confusion with the name, but "they kept the name and it sold very well. ... I think that the word is sufficiently incorporated into the language as meaning 'new' as in 'bossa nova' that the criticism isn't valid."

strndniowa said:

Thank you for the exhaustive research on an unrelated anecdote I just pulled out of my ass...