The Experiences of Film Location Tourists

Stefan Roesch

• Publisher: Channel View Publications
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781845411855
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Within the last decade film-induced tourism has gained increasing attention from academics and the industry alike. While most research has focused on the tourism-inducing effects of film productions, not much has been written about the film location tourists themselves. This book examines the on-site experiences of these tourists by drawing from various disciplines, including geography, sociology and psychology. The author accompanied tourists to film locations from The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and The Sound of Music and conducted extensive on-site research with them. The results show that only by understanding the needs and wants of film location tourists can film be utilised as a successful and sustainable instrument within strategic destination marketing portfolios.

Part 1

Film Tourism — An Overview

Chapter 1

Introduction

I was first introduced to the lengths that film tourists are willing to go when, in 2003, I came across a news item on the internet that reported an increasing number of movie fans who were trying to access The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) locations in New Zealand. During the world premiere of The Return of the King in December 2003 in Wellington, New Zealand, around 120,000 fans lined the city's streets to catch a glimpse of the film's cast and crew. Many of those fans were overseas visitors who had travelled to New Zealand to experience something of the magic of the movie. Many of them also used this opportunity to travel up and down the country to visit the film locations and yet there was not much to be seen, as the film crew had left few traces of the filming itself.

When I started doing research on the topic, I realised that not much attention had been paid to the phenomenon of film tourism by tourism researchers, nor by the tourism industry itself. It also became clear that film tourism had its beginnings long before the success of LOTR. The fact that film productions can attract tourists to film locations had already been acknowledged in academia in the 1990s (Aden et al., 1995; Riley&Van Doren, 1992; Riley, 1994; Riley et al., 1998). Anecdotal media reports on tourism-inducing film events, such as Crocodile Dundee (1986) in Australia and Braveheart (1995) in Scotland, supported the researchers' arguments. In 1996, the British Tourism Association — today's VisitBritain — was the first tourism organisation that tried to capitalise on film tourism through the publication of a movie map featuring locations from various films shot in Great Britain.

Over the last 10 years, film tourism has come increasingly to the fore, both in academia and in the tourism industry. The LOTR movies have made a significant contribution to this development. Nevertheless, many aspects of this tourism niche had only been examined anecdotally, in particular aspects concerned with the actual location encounter. There is ample evidence that watching films can create strong emotional connections to the places represented on the silver screen. It is the purpose of this book to invite you to accompany film location tourists on some of their journeys in order to understand the impacts films can have on our lives.

Setting the Scene

This book is first and foremost based on my personal research and case study fieldwork conducted over a period of three years. Additional material is derived from other sources, in particular from consulting projects, personal networking and from international conferences and seminars I have participated in over the last five years.

The main aim of the book is not to be overly theoretical, but to provide practical insights into the nature of film tourism and into the behaviour and experiences of its consumers — the film location tourists themselves. Therefore, it intends to address academia as well as industry stakeholders. For a better overview, the book is divided into three parts: general aspects of film tourism, the experiences of film locations tourists, which contains the fieldwork results, and conclusion.

Chapters 1—4 are intended to introduce the reader to the realm of film-induced tourism and to provide an overview for this fascinating area of tourism. Chapter 2 deals with some of the general aspects of film tourism, including destination marketing, product development opportunities, the sustainability of film tourism and community impacts. Chapter 3 examines film locations from a geographical point of view and analyses their potential as tourist attractions. Chapter 4 attempts to profile film location tourists by drawing on fieldwork research as well as secondary sources.

Chapters 5—8 are entirely based on concrete on-site field research with film location tourists. Due to the global nature of popular media (Morley, 2000) — of which feature films are a major segment — I concentrated my fieldwork research on three global case studies that subsequently inform Chapters 5—8. These three case studies are based on research undertaken at the LOTR locations around Wanaka, New Zealand, at Star Wars (SW) locations in Tunisia and at The Sound of Music (SoM) locations in and around Salzburg, Austria. Participant observation and image-based data were utilised in order to record behavioural issues (Collier&Collier, 2004; Feighey, 2003; MacCannell, 1992; McIntosh, 1998; Palmer, 2001), while interviews were used to identify experiential aspects (Denscombe, 1998; Jordan&Gibson, 2004; Seidman, 1998). Chapters 5—7 contain the three components of the actual film location encounter, which are its spiritual, physical and social components.

Chapter 8 results in an analysis of the film location encounter with all its different facets, including the preconditions for film location tourism, characteristics of film location tourists, the existential attractiveness of film locations and how a sense of a film-imagined place is generated. The final chapter, Chapter 9, provides practical applications for the tourism industry, in particular in terms of marketing and product development opportunities.

Tone of the Book

As relationships between media, society and individuals cannot be studied in a theoretical vacuum, the implementation of an underlying paradigm is essential to ground any fieldwork (DeFleur&Ball-Rokeach, 1989). Guba (1990: 17) circumscribes a paradigm as a 'basic set of beliefs that guide action'. Movie watching is a very emotional activity (Morkham&Staiff, 2002). Therefore, it did not seem suitable to approach this research from a supposedly 'objective' positivist stance. This conviction is echoed by Beeton's (2005: 243) statement that 'quantitative data is rarely sufficient to illuminate [the film location tourists'] expectations and subsequent experiences'. As the fieldwork research informing this book explores the on-site behaviour and experiences of film location tourists, a qualitative approach has been adopted. Such an approach aims to learn 'how individuals experience and interact with their social world, [and] the meaning it has for them [...]' (Merriam, 2002: 4).

The applied disciplinary viewpoint is that of a cultural geographer. Geography is the study of places (Cresswell, 2004), or more precisely, it is concerned with 'the combination of factors that makes each individual place on the face of the earth somehow unique' (Hudman&Jackson, 1999: 1). It can therefore be said that the core of human geography deals with place construction and representation — the search for a sense of place and self in the world (Aitken&Zonn, 1994). Film and tourism are arguably placed within temporal and spatial contexts and the construction of place and meaning. In addition, geographers have undertaken research in the areas of tourism and recreation for several decades (Hall&Page, 1999). The tourism geographer sees tourism within a spatial context, observing, analysing and explaining the relationships of leisure activities and facilities in particular areas or regions (Ritchie&Goeldner, 1994). Pearce (1999: 77) notes a significant lack in tourism geography studies concentrating on a localised scale, especially tackling questions of how 'tourism is arranged in space'.

The last consideration is that the geographical research of film is a relatively new field in geography. Although cultural geographers began to research film in the mid-1980s (Burgess&Gold, 1985), as late as the mid-1990s, Aitken and Zonn (1994: 5) describe the analysis of film from a geographer's perspective as an 'embryonic research area'. Since then, a number of studies on the geography of film have been published (Cresswell&Dixon, 2002; Le Héron, 2004; Kennedy&Lukinbeal, 1997; Peckham, 2004; Rose, 1994). Cresswell and Dixon (2002) confirm that film as a medium is a distinct geographic object worthy of academic inquiry. Kennedy and Lukinbeal (1997: 47) choose to adopt a holistic approach to geographic research on film, which they refer to as transactionalism with regard to the fact that 'geographic research on film should not seek one unifying theory, but rather move into a multiplicity of scales and combine different theoretical frameworks in creative ways'. Kennedy and Lukinbeal (1997: 38) conclude that '[r]esearch on film tourism could provide real-world examples with which to examine the validity of theoretical discussions about the relationship between film images and the effects of those images, through audience behaviour, on actual places'. This statement nicely summarises the intention of this book, namely to provide both academia and tourism stakeholders with real-world examples of film tourism in order to understand the complex relationship between film and tourism.

Describing and Defining Film Tourism

Two forms of fictional screen-based media types

The two forms of fictional screen-based media types — cinema and television broadcast — are distinct in their method of representation. This can be concluded from four main points of difference. First, cinema advertises a feature film as a public event. In contrast to cinema screenings, television productions are watched in a private, more casual atmosphere. The second distinction is the differing combination of image and sound. Whilst cinema concentrates on a highly developed image to draw the audience's attention, television has to rely heavily on the medium of sound due to the relatively small nature of the screen compared to that of the cinema.

The cinematic narrative develops around a specific problem that has to be resolved at the end of the movie. Television, on the contrary, prefers the open-ended serial that is configured through a series of interconnected episodes. Consequently, the viewer has more time to develop empathy with the characters as opposed to a one-off feature film. Lastly, both types of media have different demands on the audience. While feature films address an inquisitive audience that seeks to connect with the narrative and its meaning, the television spectator, on the contrary, is a person who has passed over the responsibility to the television broadcaster: he or she glances at a world outside but is at the same time separated from the complexity of the real world (Ellis, 1992). In this book the term 'film' stands for 'feature film' as well as for television productions such as TV movies, documentaries and serials. The terms 'feature film' and 'movie' are used as equivalents.

Definitions

'Film tourism' is a specific pattern of tourism that drives visitors to see screened places during or after the production of a feature film or a television production. According to Scotland's national tourism organisation, film tourism is 'the business of attracting visitors through the portrayal of the place or a place's storylines in film, video and television' (Scottish Tourist Board, 1997: 1). For Riley et al. (1998: 920), 'film tourism' develops when 'people are seeking sights/sites seen on the silver screen'. In academia, the terms film tourism or film-induced tourism are used as equivalents. Tooke and Baker (1996:87) take their definition a step further. For them, film tourism is 'the effect of both cinema film and of television film on the numbers of visitors coming to the place where the filming is believed to have taken place'. Tooke and Baker's (1996) assumption that visitors to film locations do not know for sure where the filming has taken place is contested in this book. Rather, research for this book uncovered that most of these visitors are generally well informed about the filming process and the involved locations.

A further point of critique is that the above-mentioned definitions fail to address the necessity for further refinement. Both of the terms 'film tourism' and 'film-induced tourism' refer to tourists who decide to travel to a place that they have previously seen on screen. This does not necessarily imply that these tourists actually intend to seek out the precise shooting locations from the movie. If they have been influenced in their travel decision through a movie as an organic image source (Gartner, 1993) and are inspired to experience, for instance, Florence due to its exposure in A Room with a View (1985), then they are film tourists. On the other hand, if the film tourist to Florence intends to visit the precise locations used for shooting scenes from the movie, he or she is a 'film location tourist'. Hence, there is a clear distinction to be made between the influence of a film production to attract visitors to a portrayed place such as Florence in general, and the intention to see the precise locations used for on-location shooting. In order to clarify things, the term 'film tourism' is used as a general, generic term in this book that also encompasses the notion of 'film location tourism'.

Film locations are highly place-specific as they have specific spatial interrelationships, including distance and direction. In this book, the term 'film location' is used for '[a]ny place other than the studio where a film is in part or completely shot' (Konigsberg, 1997: 220). In other words, it refers to a place where a film or film scenes were produced in a real physical setting other than a studio (Beaver, 1994). Konigsberg continues (1997: 220): 'Sections might be added to already existing buildings, entire structures constructed, or parts of the natural terrain changed, but the film would still be considered as shot on location'.

At this point, a clear distinction has to be made between on-locations and off-locations. While on-locations are locations found in the environment, off-locations are artificial locations in film studios, film parks or other such locales. It is not within the scope of this book to deal with off-locations, a topic that is dealt with extensively in Sue Beeton's (2005) book Film-induced Tourism. Therefore, when using the terms 'location' and 'film location' in this book, these terms always refer to on-locations.

In all of the cited literature concerned with film tourism, the visitors seeking the portrayed places are referred to as either film-induced tourists or film tourists. It can be misleading to use these terms in such a simplified manner, as they imply that there is no distinction necessary between a person visiting a place portrayed in a film or associated with it, and a person visiting the precise location where on-location shooting took place. Hence, the term film location tourist is applied only to the latter type of visitor. The film location tourist is a person who actively seeks to visit an on-location from a feature film. In this book, the precise definition of the film location tourist is: a film location tourist, whether pre-planned or by coincidence, is a person who actively visits a precise on-location that has been used for shooting a scene or scenes that were portrayed on the cinema or television screen.

History of Film Tourism

The Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) was one of the first feature films to cause major tourism influxes to a film location (Bee, 1999). After the release of the film, Tahiti turned into a major tourist destination. The actual emergence of the phenomenon occurred over a decade later with the release of films such as The Third Man (1949), Niagara (1953), To Catch a Thief (1955), Bridge on the River Kwai (1958), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and The Sound of Music (1965). For over 55 years, visitors have travelled to Vienna to experience the original sites from The Third Man (1949) (Bly, 2004). The city of Salzburg, location of the movie The Sound of Music (1965), still profits from around 300,000 film tourists per year. Of these, 70% state that the movie is the main reason for their visit (www.drehpunktkultur.at/txt07-11/1011.html, accessed 31 July 2008).

The evolution of mass tourism in the 1970s and 1980s, along with the emergence of blockbuster film productions, augmented the development of film tourism. Grihault (2003) argues that film tourism did not significantly take off until the release of the Hollywood blockbuster Jaws (1975), which served to redefine the status of the Hollywood feature film as a marketable commodity and cultural phenomenon and steer it toward 'an era of high-cost, high-tech, high-speed thrillers' (Schatz, 2003: 24). Morley and Robins (1995) dubbed this period as 'the development of a new media order', which is defined by the formation of multi-national media concerns such as Time Warner, Disney and Bertelsmann. The biggest mergers occurred in the USA when Viacom acquired the CBS Corporation for US$37.3 billion in 1999 and America Online took over Time Warner for US$165 billion (Bettig&Hall, 2003). This process of conglomeration was accompanied by significant inter-industry developments between cable television, internet and even telephone provider companies (Lewis, 2001). The consequence, especially within the movie industry, was an expanding consumer market aimed towards globalised marketing and promotion strategies. The box office successes of a number of big budget movies such as Star Wars (1977, 1980, 1983, 1999, 2002, 2005) and Titanic (1997) and television series like Dallas (1978—1991) indicated a surmounting of cultural boundaries the world over, through the generation of globally accepted images. For example, the US-American production Godzilla (1998), despite a very negative critical response and a poor domestic box office return of US$136 million, generated an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part 1: Film Tourism — An Overview
• Part 2: The Experiences of Film Location Tourists
• Part 3: Conclusion
• References