Movie
Tourism
New Zealand
(Air New Zealand, 2012).
One of the more recent destinations that has largely been impacted by movie tourism is New Zealand. Some say this is mainly down to it being the backdrop of all the ‘Lord of the Rings’ films and the success of these films has even led to Air New Zealand promoting the country as the ‘Home of Middle earth’ (Kim & Richardson, 2003).
The main aim of this marketing campaign was to show that the fantasy of the Hobbit movies could become reality in the form of a New Zealand holiday (Tourism New Zealand, 2012).
Since marketing the country as 'Middle-earth', a large increase in the number of visitors arriving from western markets has been seen (Tourism New Zealand, 2010). As a result of its success, the advert won a Colmar Brunton Ad Impact award (Tourism New Zealand, 2012).
(Bing Images, 2015).
The fact that New Zealand is associated with these films has opened up wider opportunities to enhance its international profile as a fantastic location to make films and do business. Because of this, there are a number of other government agencies working together to try and encourage more destinations to do the same as it has helped to improve the tourism, film and business industry (Tourism New Zealand, 2010).
Filming Locations (New Zealand Tourism, n,d).
According to Gardner (2014), the Hobbit trilogy has helped local businesses. In 2012, Prime Minister John Key and the actors who played the dwarfs in the trilogy opened up a pub called ‘The Green Dragon Inn’ where they sell “Hobbit Brew’. Since being open, tourists have drunk their way through 50,000 litres and it is now said to be the country’s busiest pub.
Tourism Impact Statistics
The Hobbit
Lord of the Rings
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International visitor data from November 2014 shows holiday arrivals increased by 6.2% from the previous year (New Zealand Government, 2014).
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US arrivals (one of the key target markets for the ‘middle-earth’ campaign) increased by 12.7% from the previous year (Tourism New Zealand, 2010).
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13% of all international visitors surveyed between July 2013 and June 2014 say The Hobbit movie was one of the reasons that stimulated their interest in visiting New Zealand (Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment, 2013).
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6% of the people that visited New Zealand in 2004 cited The Lord of the Rings as being one of the main reasons for visiting (Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment, 2013).
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1% said Lord of the Rings was their main or only reason for visiting and this small percentage accounted for around 32.8 million NZ$ in spend (Tourism New Zealand, 2010).
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63,200 visitors participated in a Lord of the Rings activity while on holiday here in 2004 and since then, around 47,000 visitors each year have visited one of the filming locations (Tourism New Zealand, 2010).
(Tourism New Zealand, 2014).
“DISCLAIMER: This entire website including all linked pages has been submitted as partial fulfilment for the degree of BA(Hons) in International Tourism Management at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), Preston, UK. Specifically, this website has been submitted to module code TL2123 as an assessed undergraduate project within the Division of Tourism, Hospitality and Events Management. This website is not related to any specific organisation/product/service but is meant to demonstrate my understanding of Movie Tourism. No intention is made to any specific organisation, product, service and/or person. Any similarity to real-world organisations, including branding, images, and/or product and services are purely coincidental. Copyright of images remains with the original copyright owner”.