The Montalbano effect: re-branding Sicily as a tourist destination?

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to focus on movie tourism, specifically on the “Montalbano effect”, which has seen increments in tourist visits to Sicilian sites featuring in the episodes of the popular TV series. It explores the concepts of genre and evaluative language in websites offering Montalbano tours in Sicily in an interdisciplinary perspective, aiming to combine insights from Tourism and Linguistics to analyse the phenomenon. Design/methodology/approach – The language of two corpora, one consisting of sites offering traditional Sicilian tours and another of sites devoted to Montalbano, is analysed in terms of genre and evaluative language. Findings – The study shows an emerging genre and genre hybridity that, it is suggested, are in response to market trends and may represent beginnings of a re-branding of Sicily as a tourist destination, away from past negative stereotypes associating the island with organised crime. Originality/value – The interdisciplinary aspect of the study represents a significant step towards a wider involvement of different disciplines in understanding an important social phenomenon.

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“…In film tourism, as said above, there is no pretence at the discovery of any form of exogenous reality, but rather a desire to explore virtual worlds that have been ‗experienced' first hand through television or film. As we have discussed elsewhere (Ponton and Asero 2015), there may be a crossover, or blending, between movie tourism and tours of real locations, where visitors who are mainly attracted by a film location also take time out to enjoy the conventional attractions of the locality.…”

“…However, in terms of criteria for assessing traditional tourist products, it is arguable that their trips are deficient (Pan et al 2007). Authenticity, for a tourist on a ‗Montalbano tour', relates more to the desire to delve into a virtual reality than to the traditional attractions of the places, though these may also play a role in place branding and the design of tourist products (Ponton and Asero 2015).…”

Place matters: geographical context, place belonging and the production of locality in Mediterranean Noirs

“…Similarly, in Italy, the significant increase in tourist flux to the province of Agrigento -where the Montalbano television series was shot -has even led tourism sciences to coin the expression ''Montalbano effect'' (Di Betta, 2015;Ponton & Asero, 2015). Unlike Sherlock Holmes', however, the author's and the character's houses are not the only tourist attractions: the entire territory narrated in the fiction continues to capture the interest of the public.…”

“…Montalbán, Camilleri and Izzo have been selected as case studies because of their respective relevance to Spanish, Italian and French readerships, alongside their recognition as milestone authors in crime fiction historiography. Their popularity at international level has crossed the boundaries of the literary sphere, making them prime representatives of the places where their novels lure tourism (Di Betta, 2015;Ponton & Asero, 2015;Redondo, 2017;Rosemberg & Troin, 2017).…”

Methodologies, Knowledge Areas and Tourist Destinations Addressed in Scientific Research on Tourism Induced by Audiovisual Fiction (1988-2021)

“…In this way, the analysis is opening up to new destinations, particularly India(Josiam et al, 2014) and Turkey(Kantarci;Başaran;Özyurt, 2016). Specific cases in South America (Brazil in City of God) are also gaining interest among researchers(Araújo, 2013), and there is a growing trend among southern European countries, such as Italy(Leotta, 2020;Ponton;Asero, 2015), Croatia (Tkalec; Zilic; Recher, 2017) and Spain (López; Mosquera; González, 2015; Osácar, 2016; Oviedo-García et al, 2016).…”