The Screen Tourism

SPACES AND EXCHANGES

        This notion deals with the geographical and symbolic areas that all societies occupy and the interactions between men and different societies. Our world is built on the exploration and conquest of new spaces. The different cultural, economic, sociological and language interactions have shaped and characterised our modern-day world. In order to illustrate this notion, I have chosen to study it by the prism of screen tourism. This specific sort of tourism account for a significant shares in local economies nowadays because people from all around the world want to visit the places where their favorite movie or series was shot. Thus, we may wonder to what extent movies and series industries are drivers of regional economic growth meanwhile they are maximizing visitor’s satisfaction? In order to answer this question, we will study in a first part how do they manage to satisfy the visitor and in a second part, how does this satisfaction engender an economic takeoff.

        First of all, screen tourism is an interesting way of satisfying the visitors because it allows them to take part in different activities around a common theme: their favorite movie or series. Those tour offers them a travel into an other world, time or universe. For instance the Game of Thrones tour in Northern Ireland offers to the visitor the visit of some famous places of the series such as The Iron Island or Winterfell’s Castle. The visitors can wear some typical costumes of the series for example, which permit a total immersion into the Middle Ages. The growing number of movies and series’ watchers has sharply increased the demand of tour.

        Thus, some big industries of the cinema has opened their studios to the tourist in order to concentrate more places of different movies so as to increase their incomes. For example, Universal has opened two amusement parks in USA: in Los Angeles, California and Orlando, Florida where you can visit stages where different scenes were shot. But it distinguishes itself from other tour because you can see during the visit some typical special effect of movies (for example, car explosion for the movie Fast and Furious), which is more immersive.  So screen tourism is an interesting way of tourism, because it allows a total satisfaction by offering an immersion into your favorite movie or series’ universe.

        Nevertheless, the main purpose of screen tourism is the incomes. Indeed, those tours has strongly increased the economy of some region, every year, 240 billions dollars are generated by this way of tourism. In fact, the Breaking Bad Tour soar Albuquerque, New Mexico economy. This city was faintly known for their balloon festival that attracts only few hundred persons, but thanks to this series the number of tourist boomed in this region. That’s why they are trying to maximize the client’s satisfaction so as they make him buy. But those tours are also profitable to a global economy, so much that they can promote the tour. That’s the case of New Zealand of promote the Hobbit Tour around the theme of the Middle Earth and their creatures in Tolkien’s fiction. Air New Zealand used this tour to promote their company and arouse the desire to come to New Zealand with their company.

        However some region refuse those tours because they are problematic. Indeed, moral issues can be enounced or the environment ones too. For instance, the Breaking Bad Tour raises ethical problems because the series’ theme is about a teacher suffering from a cancer who became a blue meth dealer in order to save his family economic situation. So all of the souvenir shops are selling false blue meth candy and it can be problematic because people can associate Albuquerque to drugs, which is false. Or worth, if a tourist wants to bring back those candies in their country, they may have problems with the customs. Also, environmental issues can be raised for example if the scene of a movie is shot on a special place where tourist can be degrading it. For example, the episode 7 of Star Wars is shot on a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Skellig Michael who was an ancient monastery built by monks during the 6th century. Some local people say that it can be dangerous for the site if too many person can visit it.

...