Nova Star Groupon ticket offer nears Monday morning deadline

A controversial marketing campaign for the Nova Star Ferry has sold just ten trips as the deadline nears.

The Groupon deal allows people to purchase tickets to ride the Nova Star ferry to and from Portland, Maine and Yarmouth, N.S.

But people who buy the coupon will have only 90 minutes to see Nova Scotia. Once passengers arrive in port at 8 a.m., they will have to disembark the vessel, go through customs and then return to the ship for its 9:30 a.m. departure.

With the offer set to expire Monday at 1 a.m., it appears few people are set to take the whirlwind trip.

Danny Morton, the director of cruise marketing and business development for the Nova Star, told CBC News in mid-May that about 500,000 Groupon subscribers would receive notifications of the promotion directly in their inbox.

"This is a way to introduce the ship to a whole lot of people," he said at the time. "There's great marketing benefits to putting it on a site like Groupon, so we're going to give it a try and we hope it's very successful.

Officials with Nova Star said the promotion will be limited to June and parts of July, however there is no cap on the number of coupons available for sale.

The Nova Scotia government is providing $13 million in funding this year to subsidize the ferry. It spent $28.5 million last season.