BTA Expect 2022 ‘Forbes 30 Under 30 Event’
The Bermuda Tourism Authority said they “expect that we will be able to announce details of the 2022 Forbes 30 under 30 event later this month.”
The BTA confirmed this following the official notices which listed the BTA’s contracts over $50,000 and among them was a listing which stated, “Forbes | 2-Dec-21 30-Mar-22 | 30 Under 30 Residency programme – $271,000.”
The planned event was cancelled last year after receiving negative feedback on social media, with the Guardian noting, “Details of the plan were first revealed on Twitter by Rachel Zarrell, one of the honourees in 2018 for her work as a brand strategist at BuzzFeed. Zarrell, like many other social media users who saw the post, questioned the reliability and wisdom of Forbes’s approach.
“It only takes one person with a delayed Covid result or a false negative to get everyone sick,” she wrote in a Tweet, which intiatlly received thousands of retweets and appears to be deleted now. “And as we get inch closer to half a million dead [in the US] it feels incredibly myopic to organise a big privilege party on a tropical island.”
Bernews asked the BTA if those funds were for the now cancelled event, and a spokesperson explained that “as the event was cancelled in 2021, the BTA was not responsible for payment of the contracted funds. However we expect that we will be able to announce details of the 2022 Forbes 30 under 30 event later this month.”
Covid aside, do all of the “winners” agree with our ANTI-LGBTQ stance? I would think people would not want to reward such a hateful place with their attendance and revenue. These are smart folks with opinions and influence.