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Rhode Island officials released a promotional video Monday in an effort to encourage people everywhere to choose the state for their next vacation destination.
The only problem? There was a shot in the video that wasn't even filmed in Rhode Island. An intro scene shows a portion of Harpa, a concert hall and conference center in Reykjavik, Iceland.
‘‘Imagine a place that feels like home but holds enough uniqueness that you’re never bored,’’ the video's narrator says as a skateboarder rides past a glass building.
But Internet users commented saying, "Hey, that's not Rhode Island -- that's the Harpa concert hall and conference center in Reykjavik."
Greg Nemes, a professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, visited Iceland in October and said he recognized the building, which has a distinct steel framework and an exterior of different colored glass panels.
‘‘It was pretty unmistakable to me, so I did some digging around and posted on Facebook about it,’’ Nemes told the Associated Press.
Other people agreed with him, posting side-by-side photos of the building in the Rhode Island ad and Harpa.
The video was removed from YouTube Tuesday.
The editing company, IndieWhip, has promised to update the video at no extra cost to the state or the Commerce Corporation, which paid $20,000 for the original video.
Another mistake was later revealed when people starting pointing out that Rhode Island's tourism website claimed that state, which is the smallest in the United States, boasts 20 percent of the country's historic landmarks.
The tourism site reportedly shows archived versions of the page with the incorrect statistic listed as early as 2008.
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