Abstract

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.

The phenomenon of film tourism is still a new field of study, and although we know that film and television inspires people to travel to film locations, we don’t fully understand why. This book is therefore extremely timely and important, and delivers incisive commentary from one of the world’s foremost experts in this niche area. This is a unique, highly readable resource for anyone interested in this dynamic part of the tourism industry.

This book is an extremely useful tool for VisitBritain to identify the global importance of film tourism and the impact on other destinations and attractions. It is essential reading for anyone in the tourism industry who wants to use film tourism as a 'hook' and I would certainly recommend it to any destination marketeers.

Stefan Roesch has worked in the tourism industry for over fifteen years and is currently Deputy Managing Director for CenTouris, a market research and tourism consulting institute based at the University of Passau, Germany. He is also a freelance consultant in film tourism, an area he has been researching for ten years. As part of his doctoral thesis Stefan undertook fieldwork research on several case studies, including The Lord of the Rings in New Zealand, Star Wars in Tunisia and The Sound of Music in Austria. He regularly speaks at international conferences and advises the industry on how to utilise film for marketing strategies. In 2013, Stefan founded the film production company Punakaiki Productions.

Overall, the book has made a key contribution in the detailed investigation of film location tourists' experiences. The film tourist experience has not received much attention, and generally not the specific and purposeful ones presented in the book.