Movies and Tourism
Any location with a bit of a tourism opportunity tries to get ahead in the market through various ways like billboards, newspaper supplements, online advertisements and even through the cinema. But there's nothing better than having a movie shot on location. For example New Zealand has had a great amount of success after the Lord of the Rings franchise. The movies presented amazing shots of the mountains, the volcanoes and the waterfalls and these made New Zealand one of the most sought after travel destinations. After The Hobbit started filming here, New Zealand was rebranded as "Middle Earth", getting a rise in visitor numbers to 10% - with 8.3% of international visitors overall citing The Hobbit as their draw. The movie set for The Hobbit, Hobbiton (located just outside Matamata on the North Island) draws over 2000 visitors each day.
Naturally, the success of New Zealand attracted some jealousy, and some destinations wanted to grab a piece of the cinematic tourism loot, but without having a film shot there. "Some local authorities promote film tourism by claiming that their location has inspired backdrops in a film", says Erik Sellgren, the author of "Film-Induced Tourism". “One in China is luring tourists to a mountainous area in the Hunan province which has similarities to the floating mountains seen in Avatar. They have even gone as far as re-naming one of the peaks ‘Avatar Hallelujah Mountain". The reality is that Avatar is almost entirely a CGI creation.
Having a movie shot in a country, doesn't ensure that particularly country fame and tourism success. "There is never a guarantee that tourist numbers will increase rapidly just because a film is depicting beautiful sceneries and great stories of a place,” according to Sellgren. “The success stories often are films that, first of all, give the audience a cohesive experience – with a great story, backdrop and characters – but also bring some novelty to the table, and focus quite a lot on one place or area.”
For example, "Slumdog Millionaire", "Lost in Translation" and "Notting Hill" are all movies that made it on both counts. But determining the factors that make film tourism so successful is a hard job. Martin Cuff says that there needs to be a connection between the audience and what's playing on the screen. “Films with strong, character-driven storylines and emotional tone tend to have more tourism potential than films made for purely entertainment purposes,” he said. Associate professor of tourism at La Trobe Business School agrees: Film tourism can be a highly charged, emotional experience,” she said. “We see people re-enacting scenes, role-playing – consciously and unconsciously – and I have found myself shedding a tear at some places I have visited due to the emotional response I have being where a powerful, personal film experience was based.”
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