Sweden gets its own telephone number
 

If you have tourist questions or just want to know about Sweden, you can dial the number and speak to real Swedes. Provided that the Swedish people who signed up to promote Sweden are decent, then I think this is brilliant!

http://www.thelocal.se/20160406/swed...n-phone-number

This is a pretty cool idea. That being said, I cannot wait to read about the misuse of it.

Nina sounds like she may get the axe:

"I'm very curious about why people want to come to this cold country in the north," she told The Local"

4chan is now on the case.

Oh great.

"I think we might go to Sweden for a holiday this year, shall we see what a local advises?"

"Yes, dear, off you go."

ring-ring ring-ring

"Hallo, I'd like to know..."

"Our records show you might have been in a car accident recently is that right? And were you missold payment protection insurance? We have some really good triple-glazing in Sweden - are you interested? Press 1 for......."

Hehehehe

SOunds sort of interesting at first, but then really dumb. As a country, why would you allow any "random" person to sign up and tell tourists things? Could be really bad advice, bad attitude, bad publicity, or worse. For example, I can just see a lot of sex workers signing up to get those phone calls, not to mention other businesses.

I can't imagine wanting to call up a "random" person to ask tourism advice, anyway, when I travel. I don't want random.

Sex workers? In Sweden? It's illegal there, and they mean it.
Any random person you called in Sweden could tell you that.

And while a random stranger may not be able to tell you the opening hours of a specific museum in Malmö, it could be interesting to ask more general questions about lifestyles, which areas of the country are "hidden gems", where they like to spend their vacations in the country etc.

In the end, I doubt it's meant to be more than a bit of fun.

And who gets what out of the volunteer labour?

>>Sex workers? In Sweden? It's illegal there, and they mean it.<<

Oh, but they wouldn't be selling sex, would they? They'd just hint at the availability of their company to show someone the special attractions of Sweden.

Here's what the random Swede said to an Adweek journalist who called Sweden:

Nobody asked me any questions. I got no instructions what to say. I actually asked them about that, too. "How do you know that people won't, you know, be saying things that you won't necessarily endorse as the official tourism agency for Sweden?" And they're like, "That's the point! We don't want to control the message! We're celebrating our press freedoms, etc."

Sweden is celebrating 250 years of freedom of censorship so I guess anything goes!