Film-Induced Tourism

Sue Beeton

• Publisher: Channel View Publications
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781845415839
• eBook ISBN: 9781845415860
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

This research-based monograph presents an introduction to the concept of film-induced tourism, building on the work of the seminal first edition. Many new case studies exploring the relationship between film and TV and tourism have been added and existing cases have been updated. The book incorporates studies on film studio theme parks, the impact of film-induced tourism on communities and the effect of film on tourists' behaviour. It introduces new content including film-induced tourism in non-Western cultures, movie tours and contents tourism. The book is an essential resource for postgraduate students and researchers in the fields of tourism, film and media studies.

Part 1

Introduction to Film-Induced Tourism

Global and local events, from terrorism through to disease, epidemics and political uncertainty, impact communities around the world in ways that have not always been foreseen. Changes have been felt socially as well as economically as the ground shifts beneath once-stable, predictable societies. Tourism, while being a victim of all these events, is also a protagonist, creating change while having a major role to play in community reconstruction. Tourism can exert political power, be a force for peace, an economic and social regenerator and diversifier, and can bring communities together (or tear them apart). The popular media also plays a major role in today’s society, particularly the medium of film, be that through television, movies, DVDs or videos. The link between travel and popular media, particularly in terms of imaginative literature, has been long recognised, while the pervasiveness of film in today’s globalised society has strengthened this link, and is the genesis of this book.

This publication considers the relationship between film and tourism, and, while the need to look at some aspects in detail has placed a certain focus on specific sites in Australia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, film-induced tourism is given a global treatment. As the popularity of researching this phenomenon has increased, numerous international examples and cases are included. Ongoing, immersive visits to film tourism sites around the world also support the work presented here, resulting in a global approach, while still considering elements of film-induced tourism on a micro, local level.

Due to my own Westernised background and heritage, the primary focus in this publication is on developed nations, or ‘first world countries’; however, there are many developing countries that are used as film sites in the hope also of attracting tourism. Where reliable information is available, such cases have been included, but it is outside the scope of this publication to detail the effect of film on developing countries, their communities and tourism. This is a topic for further study and publications by others, and is starting to be addressed.

Countries such as Australia and New Zealand do not have such high population densities or tourist numbers as other parts of the world, yet tourism is extremely important to them. One of the consequences of this is that, while the impacts of tourism are not as evident, the effects can be just as powerful over time, both negatively and positively. Consequently, such nations need to be studied in their own right – they cannot rely solely on repeating international trends. This point is amply demonstrated when we look at film-induced tourism and the cases examined throughout this book.

1Popular Media and Tourism

The popular media of the day influences the appeal of travel destinations and activities through constructing or reinforcing particular images of those destinations, and acting as ‘markers’ (MacCannell, 1976). In the past, media such as literature, music and poetry have been a major element, even more so than visual media such as art (Seaton, 1998). This first chapter sets the context by looking at the general influence of popular media, developing it to include film. Film-induced tourism is described and defined, along with a discussion of the two different elements of on-location and off-location film tourism. By the end of the chapter, some of the complexities of film-induced tourism are becoming evident, which are discussed in more detail in subsequent chapters.

Popular Media, the Picturesque and Tourism

Prior to the development of film and television, a mass audience had access primarily only to written works. From the early 20th century, film (and later television) became the main mass media outlet and has been particularly effective in affecting tourism, with moving images being intricately intertwined with travel, especially in terms of moving people, and exotic-ness since their inception in the 19th century (Beeton, 2015).

Anthropologists such as MacCannell (1976) view tourism attractions as requiring a marker that provides ‘meaning’ as well as signifying the attraction. Media such as literature and film can provide a wealth of meaning, real and imagined (Laing & Frost, 2012). In a rare, yet pertinent, comment on film’s role as a tourism marker, MacCannell cites the case of a film site:

As a sight, it amounts to no more than a patch of wild grass, but it was recently provided with an elaborate off-sight marker by the motion picture industry. The fortuitous acquisition of this new marker apparently caught the promoters of the area by surprise as the following information in the brochure is over-stamped in red ink: VISIT THE BONNIE AND CLYDE SHOOTOUT AREA. Also overprinted in red ink is a square box surrounding a site description that appeared in the original printing of the brochure…They [visitors] do not arrive expecting to see anything and are content to be involved with the marker. (MacCannell, 1976: 114)

Time and again we see film-based tourists and fans being attracted to what, to an outsider, is completely nondescript, but is powerfully significant, often, but not always, marked by a small plaque or note on a movie database such as the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Many of the sites in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit have even been identified by their global positioning system (GPS) coordinates in Ian Brodie’s publications (Brodie, 2004, 2011, 2014). I discuss the rationale (even necessity) behind this elsewhere in the book, but primarily this was because many of the sites were not immediately recognisable due to significant use of computer-generated imagery (CGI) technology and as other sites were returned to their original states.

Since the late 19th century, cultural representations through literary associations have become increasingly important in tourist visitation and promotion throughout the world, from the New England town of Concord with its famous 19th-century residents Henry Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott and Nathaniel Hawthorne to the British Tourism Authority’s (BTA) promotion of regions known as ‘Burns Country’ and ‘Bronte Country’. The link between literature, film and tourism is examined further in Chapters 3 and 10 as well as incidentally throughout the book.

While books and the written word remain influential tourism influencers today, as evidenced in Laing and Frost’s 2012 publication, Books and Travel, these touristic concepts have now expanded into other popular media, in particular, film. Various tourism and film authorities and even fans have developed movie maps, many of which are now available as interactive sites on the internet, such as the MovieMaps site at https://moviemaps.org, and as mobile apps, such as Film Locate with locations of over 150 films by map, satellite, hybrid, list or directions, while others such as the MovieLoci app show the locations of movie and television sites near your current location and can compare the current site with how it appears in the film.

Most of the world’s great pilgrimage and tourist sites were established through the written media such as those literary associations noted above, well before the coming of film, limiting the effect that film had on actually establishing the iconic status of such sites. However, as mooted in the introduction this is not the case in countries such as Australia and New Zealand, where the majority of our tourist sites (including the ancient indigenous sites) are, in one way or another, products of the 20th century. In other words, they have developed in the age of film. For example, the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House, the Outback and High Country (as generic Australian bush heritage sites as well as relating to specific legends) and even Uluru have reached iconic status through the influence of film, still photographs, documentaries and even science fiction movies. In fact, the early European records of Ayers Rock (Uluru) had photographs and moving pictures associated with them. New Zealand’s Maori culture and dramatic scenery (thermal in the North, glacial in the South) are achieving similar status through film. Consequently, by studying Australasian cases, we can see how film affects images and emotions, and how related tourism can develop. This in turn enables us to propose theoretical models and approaches to the study of film-induced tourism.

In spite of these modern influences, the Romantic movement of the 18th and 19th centuries maintains its influence on all areas of tourism. Romanticist writers such as Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Byron and Rousseau stimulated an interest in nature, scenery and mountains (Lickorish & Jenkins, 1997). Such literary movements grew up more or less concurrently in Scotland, Germany, Switzerland and England, followed by France, and worshipped ‘nature as a benign, maternal goddess capable of renewing the spiritual batteries of jaded urbanites’ (Seaton, 1998: 11). This longing for exotic and/or unspoiled landscapes brought the countryside to symbolise a ‘golden place’ that still exists in the psyche of urbanites today and has had a major impact on the development and imaging of tourism (Beeton, 2004).

By the turn of the 19th century, attitudes towards the countryside had emerged based primarily on the Romantic movement (Slee, 1998). Romantic pastoral images predominated during and after the Industrial Revolution, when the urbanisation of many countries underpinned a longing for the rural idyll. For example, in 1800 only a quarter of the population of England and Wales lived in cities, whereas by 1900 three-quarters did. Victorian families sought escape from their blackened cities to a romantic other world where nature was transcendent (Seaton, 1998). The influence of the imaginative literature of the Romantic period is particularly evident in Scotland, where tourists were attracted ‘…not just from England, but also Europe, particularly Germans – ardent devotees of Romanticism – many of whom wrote accounts of their visits which helped to popularise the country still further’ (Seaton, 1998: 17).

Closely aligned with Romanticism and highly relevant to the development of modern tourism and film is the concept of ‘picturesque’. This was an ‘ideology of landscape as pretty pictures for consumers, to be enjoyed as a visual experience divorced from any concept of use value or human purpose except private enjoyment’ (Seaton, 1998: 9). Picturesque views became a key component of the tourist gaze, with rough bridges, sunsets, moonlight, cattle (seen from a distance), hedgerows and winding, tree-lined lanes being some of the desired elements.

However, in Australia and North America, the predominant romantic rural idyll was not green fields and hedgerows, but revolved around a frontier, pioneering heritage, reflecting elements of the romantic notion of ‘noble savagery’ and ‘otherness’. It was about man against nature and, at times, against the savage natives who formed part of that ‘enemy of nature’. The rural idyll was one of achievement against adversity, rather than the gentler, rural idyll of Europe (Beeton, 2004). Such differences reflect the various needs of those who created them, such as in Europe where the move towards industrialisation and urbanisation had to be tempered by a contrasting rural peace, whereas in the new worlds of the Americas and An...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures and Tables
• Introduction to the Second Edition
• Part 1: Introduction to Film-Induced Tourism
• Part 2: Film-Induced Tourism on Location
• Part 3: Off-Location Film Studio Tourism
• Part 4: Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index