Films and Destinations—Towards a Film Destination: A Review

Abstract

The destination image is a complex construction in which the different sources of information consulted are decisive. Among these information sources, we can find films, which have a relevant function to create destination images. Films are one of the factors that most influences people in their motivation to travel to a destination. The academic literature on film tourism has grown considerably in recent years, but an updated revision is needed. Due to this fact, the main contribution of this paper is the proposal of an updated review of the academic literature focused on film tourism and destinations and their management implications. The general objective of this research is to analyse the existing literature, systematising the relationships that exist between films, film tourism, destination image, and tourist destination. To this end, a systematic review of the literature has been carried out, with two aims: on the one hand, a review of the existing literature from a descriptive perspective, showing the main publications, authors and topics, and on the other hand, a review from a thematic perspective. The results of the latter will be addressed in the discussion and conclusions. The results of the descriptive analysis highlight the significant growth in the literature analysed over the last 45 years, especially between 2005 and 2015. They also underline that the most studied topics are film destinations, marketing and destination image. The results of the thematic analysis highlight the importance of films and series as important information sources on the creation of destination images. The thematic analysis also provides information on the negative and positive aspects of film destination management.

Who takes part in film tourism? The analysis of determinants of visiting film locations

“…T A B L E 6 Structure of respondents by main motivation to take a trip. The presented results reflect on propositions (Domínguez-Azcue et al, 2021;Hahm & Wang, 2011;Kim, 2012) First, it has to be mentioned that, in line with the results of Macionis (2004), only a small proportion of the tourists within the sample of the study travelled intentionally to visit a given film site.…”

What They Say and What They Do: Comparing Destination Marketing Activities Related to Movie Tourism in Croatia’s Zadar County

“…In terms of the scholarly research on the destination marketing activities factor of the Hudson and Ritchie (2006a) conceptual framework, systematic literature reviews by Cardoso et al (2017) and Domínguez-Azcue et al (2021) provide a closer look into the state of the art of research on the movie-induced tourism. According to Cardoso et al (2017), there are two major streams of research on movie tourism.…”

“…In Domínguez-Azcue et al (2021), the critical role of DMOs and the importance of the collaboration between DMOs and film commission in ensuring a destination's success is clearly recognized. However, of the 118 articles systematically reviewed, only 20 deal with marketing and promotion.…”

“…Among these, the vast majority use anecdotal evidence and offer prescriptive advice on how to successfully promote a destination before, during or after a move production. No study in Domínguez-Azcue et al (2021) explores whether and to what degree the destination's stated or planned marketing activities have been implemented in reality. That said, a separate search of academic databases uncovered one scholarly article that is relevant to our study, an article that was not covered by either Cardoso et al (2017) or Domínguez-Azcue et al (2021).…”

“…No study in Domínguez-Azcue et al (2021) explores whether and to what degree the destination's stated or planned marketing activities have been implemented in reality. That said, a separate search of academic databases uncovered one scholarly article that is relevant to our study, an article that was not covered by either Cardoso et al (2017) or Domínguez-Azcue et al (2021). Thus, in a study of movieinduced marketing activities undertaken by DMOs in Egypt, it was revealed that DMOs did a poor job in promoting Egypt (El Samie Mohamed 2016).…”