Saudi Arabian tourism officials reportedly asked Georgia Love to remove all photos of her controversial trip from Instagram following intense backlash.

The Bachelorette Australia 2016 star and her husband, Lee Elliott, recently visited Saudi Arabia as part of an all-expenses-paid influencer trip to help promote tourism to the once-hermit nation.

However, as soon as the couple began posting about their holiday on social media, fans were quick to criticise the pair for their decision to promote a country with a rich history of violating human rights.

georgia love lee elliot
Georgia Love’s manager revealed that Visit Saudi tourism asked the couple to remove their posts. Source: Instagram @georgiealove.

Now, Georgia’s manager has disclosed that Visit Saudi, the tourism company behind the trip, told the couple to “remove all of the posts” following the backlash.

“She was told by the Saudi tourism people to remove all of the posts,” she told the Daily Telegraph. “They were quite upset that she was getting a lot of negative reaction.”

Georgia’s manager also said that the tourism officials didn’t want the criticism to “impede on [their] trip” and released the couple from their posting obligations.

“They were very sympathetic to her situation and said, ‘Remove the posts, we don’t require you to do any more posting for us.”

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Why Did Georgia Love and Lee Elliott Cop Backlash Over Their Trip?

After Georgia announced in a since-deleted post that she and Lee were “among the first Aussies” to visit Saudi, the pair copped backlash en masse for their “immoral” trip.

Meanwhile, journalist Peter Ford Tweeted that Saudi Arabia “executed 81 convicts in a single day”.

“This is the country Georgia Love accepted a free trip to visit. Of the 81 you can be sure there is a disproportionate number of women, gays & possibly journalists. Did you really need a freebie trip that badly Georgia?”

Peter then added a slew of other posts including: “Now the world is opening up again you might choose the Eiffel Tower, Edinburgh Castle or The Acropolis but Georgia Love is pushing Saudi Arabia. Sorry Georgia but ‘Chop Chop Square’ — where woman and gays are executed — just doesn’t do it for me in the same way [sic],” he wrote.

Georgia Love and Lee Elliott Did Not Originally Disclose That the Trip Was Paid-For

On March 17, Lee said he and Georgia “truly hear and understand” what their fans were saying.

“We thought long and hard about coming and we decided to come as the world is changing for the better and Saudi along with it,” he penned on Instagram.

He also explicitly stated that they were “not being paid to be here”.

Lee responded to backlash and asserted that they were “not being paid” to visit Saudi Arabia. Source: Instagram @leeroyelliott.

While they had tagged #VisitSaudi, they failed to tag #ad — which is also against Instagram’s policy on sponcon.

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