In 1939, André Malraux, writer and future minister of culture under French President Charles De Gaulle, wrote: “cinema is an art and also an industry.” The historian and critic of the seventh art Peter Bachlin responded: “cinema is merchandise, and yet it is art.” It was like that from the beginning. The first case of product placement within a cinematographic work dates back to the short film Washing Day in Switzerland (1896): by showing Lever Brothers’ Sunlight soap, the Lumière brothers reduced production costs.
This more or less subtle form of sponsorship today moves $23 billion a year with an increase of 14% since 2020, according to The New York Times. For a few years now, in addition to promoting products, cinema has also become a driving force for tourism. The so-called set-jetting, or film-tourism, consists of being inspired by movies and television series to choose a travel destination. In this case too, the roots are ancient.
In fact, the golden age of Hollywood had among its objectives to create the myth of the American Way of Life, a true theatricalization of a nation and a territory. After the Second World War the phenomenon spread to the rest of the world: Roman Holiday (1953) revived the tourist fascination with the Eternal City, an infatuation that reached its peak with Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960), when the screenwriter Ennio Flaiano declared: “Look at them, they want to be like us.” On a smaller scale, something similar happened in the Tabernas desert, in Almería, in the footsteps of Sergio Leone.
However, that was still minority tourism. The first great impact in times of globalization was produced by the Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003), when New Zealand, alias Middle Earth, became a pilgrimage destination for millions of fans. From 2000 to 2006, the tourist flow to the country grew by 60% as a result of the films. The New Zealand Film Commission understood the potential of the phenomenon and has since offered producers subsidies that cover up to 20% of the costs.
Today, so-called Film Commissions exist all over the world and their main task is to attract productions capable of promoting the territory. We then speak of location placement, that is, the creation of narrative devices that place some places in central contexts of a cinematographic or television work, in order to promote the recognition of their cultural, landscape and productive identity and attract qualified tourism. In return, the territories must guarantee good connections, qualified labor and, obviously, coherence with narrative objectives.
The Association of Film Commissioners International (AFCI), based in Beverly Hills, California, is the entity that internationally establishes good practices for collaboration between the various Film Commissions and the film industry. Contacted by La Vanguardia, AFCI assures that “the role of a Film Commission is to attract productions, since this leads to economic development and job creation.” Almost all of Woody Allen’s European films, for example, were developed under this logic, although it did not always work. As reported from San Sebastián, in fact, the impact generated by Rifkin’s Festival (2020) was much less than that of Ocho surnames vascos (2014).
Erik Nachtrieb, CEO of SetJetters, an application that maps all the places in the world used as film locations, explains that “studios often ‘sell’ this idea: we will put you on the map. However, film tourism remains an underutilized resource. Our app measures when a tourist is within 60 meters of a location and when he takes a photo within the application. With this data, Film Commissions can demonstrate a real impact on tourism in a region and attract productions.”
If the artistic product finds favor with the public, the results arrive. A series like Treme, filmed in New Orleans between 2010 and 2013, had the goal, achieved, of revitalizing tourism after Hurricane Katrina. Florida, for its part, in the last 30 years has built a cinematographic imaginary that today can compete with New York or Los Angeles. In the eighties, Don Johnson playing detective James Crockett in the iconic series Miami Vice marked an era. Then came CSI: Miami and Dexter, to finish defining the typical lifestyle of the tropical metropolis.
In northern England, Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, identified as Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, saw a 230% increase in visitors and a £9 million benefit to the local economy after the first Harry films Potter. VisitBritain, the organization that promotes tourism in Great Britain, organizes guided tours of other scenes in the saga. There are also several ‘James Bond experiences’ and the year after the release of Braveheart (1995), the Wallace Monument recorded a 300% increase in visitors.
For some time now, destinations that manage to capture the attention of travelers thanks to their presence on the screen have been striving to offer an increasingly broader and more diversified offer. This is how thematic tours and packages are born, which offer the opportunity to visit filming locations and live unique experiences, such as participation in events or the possibility of meeting the actors.
Although set-jetting is not new, it has had a big boost after the pandemic, during which many people spent hours in front of the television dreaming of traveling again. Netflix series such as Emily in Paris, Master of the None or Chef’s Table have unleashed new, even more specific tourism phenomena. Where is that little square? How do I get to that hotel, to that beach, to that restaurant?
Sicily’s tourism department says that in the city where the second season of The White Lotus was filmed, Taormina, there was a stable increase in tourism of 7.5%, made up mainly of American visitors looking to stay in the same hotel in Sicily. the Serie. The Italian island stars in many international productions and in March 2023, TripAdvisor ranked it as the number one tourist destination in the world for set-jetting.
Game of Thrones fans form another group that gave rise to true pilgrimages. In Dubrovnik, Croatia, in 2015 there were 300 themed tours, in 2017 there were already 4,500. Malta is another of the locations ‘blessed’ by the HBO series, although the island has been a favorite setting for major international productions for years, from Gladiator (2000) to Napoleon (2023).
The Girona City Council commissioned a study that showed that 3,670,244 euros would be needed to pay for an advertising campaign like the one generated by the arrival of Game of Thrones. In the Catalan city, guided tours of the filming locations were devised and during the summer months, in the church of Sant Lluc, visitors can take a photo with the throne from the series. In 2021, a cultural and cinematographic routes application was created, which allows you to visit the city through some of the productions it has hosted.
According to a 2023 report prepared by the specialized search engine Expedia, movies and television series are already the main source of inspiration for travel, with 44%, far surpassing the influence of social networks, which reaches 15%. %. Two-thirds of global travelers have considered visiting a destination after seeing it in movies or series, and 39% have actually done so. According to Nachtrieb, “many are general tourists who become film tourists when they discover that something has been filmed in the place where they are.”
In recent weeks, tourist interest in climbing the Chilean mountains where The Snow Society (2023) is set has increased, an economic opportunity for remote places that nevertheless hides some threats. As is easy to imagine, in fact, tourism linked to series and movies can produce episodes of massification. Queues to take a photo in front of the steps of The Exorcist (1973), in Washington, or the fire station of Ghostbusters (1984), in New York, are not new, but in the age of Instagram things can only get worse .
In this sense, AFCI explains that it always recommends that commissions and agencies that want to promote this type of tourism “protect the territory and provide crowd control.” Perhaps the most famous example of the risk involved is Maya Bay in Thailand, the setting for the 2000 film The Beach with Leonardo DiCaprio: the bay was closed in 2018 for more than three years after authorities deemed the reefs coral had been damaged by excessive tourism after the film. Unfortunately, we all know that the tourist, movie buff or not, is not exactly the best version of the human being.
