The World Is Your Theater

96.5% of Americans have at least one television in their home. In today’s world, television is used for many purposes, such as entertainment or information. Local television providers are constantly advertising new packages with more channels. This entices customers to have more options and results in them spending more time watching their television. There are constantly new things to discover, and you can be one of them.

The travel industry does quite well when integrated with film. Disney is a great example of this from making their typical animation movies to making a nature film. They realized that people are fascinated by the wonders of the world and took advantage of that. They crafted Planet Earth in 2009 and made over $109 million in the box office. Disney did not simply create a story about animals; the movie took the audience on a journey through a breathtaking look at the world we live in. That is something no magazine, newspaper, or even travel blog can do. Disney specifically marketed towards people interested in this planet we call earth and show off its beauty through film. If a photo speaks a thousand words, then a movie speaks the language. But if people love this earth so much why do people stay at home? These large corporations not only market to people who love nature but voyagers and tourists who want to visit the plains of Africa shown in the Disney movie or visit other wonderful places. Forbes depicts the influence that television has when they say, “Whether you are at home or touring the world, the best shows on the Travel Channel can cure your wanderlust.” The Travel Channel’s marketing team is doing a good job of using the media of TV and film by constantly putting out quality content with high viewers. Another example of a company or studio using film for travel is the producers for movies.

If a photo speaks a thousand words, then a movie speaks the language.

Producers do not use third party companies such as travel companies to find locations for films; instead, they spend their money on location scouts that are already with the studio and acquire licenses to film. These location scouts talk with business owners, town leaders, governor of a state, or even governments at times to get rights for locations. For example, in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, the location scout would have needed to contact two different countries to get permission to access the film. The film itself also heavily encourages travel. The movie depicts a man who is forced to travel the world to keep his job. During his adventures, he sees a lot of interesting people, witnesses beautiful landscapes, and ultimately has fun. This film needed the expertise to know where they should shoot it. You would have the opportunity to tell film directors what are some of the best places to film. Whilst you do this, you are indirectly increasing tourist revenue in that town, city, or country. This job also allows you to remind people that they do not need to travel to big popular places, like London or Paris. This movie is a perfect illustration of such. Walter Mitty had the most adventure in places he never even heard of. This location scout is a different form of travel marketing but still heavily impacts travel markets.

This is an amazing avenue to advertise different countries but again indirectly impact businesses. Many opportunities open up for towns and cities to reach out to these film directors and ask to be at least mentioned if not physically filmed. Sometimes movies are set in certain places but are actually filmed in a studio. The film director still needs to get permission to use the location name, which is included in copyright law. Imagine seeing a scene from Vatnajökull National Park in Iceland where they filmed scenes for Walter Mitty and being inspired to go see it yourself.

These movies cause people to have that adventurous wonder. This creates amazing advertisements for the locations. Skift has said in one of their articles, “Starring in a film has become a surefire way to boost tourism for a destination.” They created a wonderful chart showing hit blockbusters and what they did tourist wise for the location. For example, the Lord of the Rings trilogy caused New Zealand annual tourist spending to double to $6 billion between 1999 to 2004. More recently, Little Women, a movie released in 2019 and filmed in Orchard House in Massachusetts, caused a 65% increase in one year after release for tourist revenue or visitor numbers. The results of this study are an indication of a high correlation between film tourism success and one of the four factors, which was mentioned more detailed in a research article named, “Promoting Destinations via Film Tourism: An Empirical Identification of Supporting Marketing Initiatives.” These destinations found a massive increase in all forms of revenue. From hotels to airlines, restaurants and local markets all benefit from getting their town in a movie or TV show.

Many of these small towns would not be found on the map if it were not for this form of advertisement. Scranton Pennsylvania had just over 73,000 residents the year the popular TV the office was released. Scranton was simply just known as an electric town, providing large sums of electricity. But because of its name being used for a TV show, it grew in popularity and having 3,500 tourists taking tours of different locations mentioned in the show.