On the other day I was watching Rossellini's Viaggio in Italia (Journey to Italy, 1954) and thinking about its innocent, unintended approaches on film-induced tourism. Film-induced tourism is under the umbrella of cultural tourism – to be clear what does it mean take a look at its definition by Hudson and Brent Ritchie:
„Sometimes called movie-induced or film-induced tourism, film tourism is defined here as tourist visits to a destination or attraction as a result of the destination’s being featured on television, video, or the cinema screen.” (HUDSON, Simon & BRENT RITCHIE, J.R.: 2006. Promoting Destinations via Film Tourism: An Empirical Identification of Supporting Marketing Initiatives. Journal of Travel Research, Vol. 44, May, p.387)
So during watching Ingrid Bergman's flâneurish visits on Southern Italian sites – Naples and Pompeii – I was wondering how many tourists (or even disaffected couples...) decided to travel to this side of Europe just because they've seen the film. We exactly know how the directors of the Neorealism were fought against the government's censorial efforts which tried to sweep all the postwar problems under the society's carpet. Already at the end of the '40s Italy stepped on the well paved sidewalk of the prosperity, where the realism didn't mean poverty and social exploitation anymore. Finally, Giulio Andreotti's law in 1949 officially controlled and restricted the possible ways of talking about contemporary Italy (if I'm not mistaken, he is "that" Andreotti..). From the time being the voice of Visconti (Ossessione, 1943), De Sica (Ladri di biciclette/The Bycicle Thief, 1948) or De Santis (Riso amaro/Bitter Rice, 1949) couldn't be as effective (and "real") as it was before (btw, according to the legend, after the screening of Visconti's Ossessione Mussolini himself stood up furiously and shouted: "This is not Italy!"). To take into consideration of this contextual background some might get answers on the baffling mixture of a depraved relationship and the sites' beauty, moreover maybe on the strange, sudden ending of the film as well.
But back to the film-induced tourism: Compare Rossellini's intentions which were narrowed and shaped by an indirect censorship (they subsided only those films which created a positive view on the country) with a production which obviously and deliberately serves interests of certain countries' or cities' touristic aims. Mentioning an extreme example: Phyllida Lloyd's terrible (a simple exploitation of the deserved success of the ABBA songs – as a cinematic production doesn't worth anything) Mamma Mia! (2008) was openly sponsored by the Hellenic Film Commission Office, and as a result the represented island (Skopelos (its made-up name in the movie is Kalokairi)) might face with an extreme growth in tourism. There's nothing wrong with this – the phenomenon is more and more part of the productions' PR logic.
See the better example of Martin McDonagh's In Bruges (2008). Better, because it's "product placement" is less obvious, at least it is covered with an ironic voice (McDonagh's apologies – following his film's unexpected success – in the Flemish television on the possible American tourist hordes visiting Bruges was really funny). Click here for a movie-map of the city.
What is more interesting is the elevation of the consciousness around the importance of the film-induced tourism (from the "wait-and-see" PR to the anticipatory strategies), the sites appearence as an integrated product, the changing film language which bends in order to catalisate the need for travel in us. But this is another story... (currently I'm working on a pilot project which combines the values of the film-induced tourism with the European Capital of Culture brand's potential).
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