It is widely recognized that location images greatly influences tourist destination choices. The images of a location play a significant role in influencing tourist’s decision-making process as the basis for where to visit (Gartner 1989; Echtner & Ritchie 1991). This is based on the favor-ability of a location of choice.

Butler (1990) suggests that films can influence the travel preferences of those who are exposed to the destination attributes and create a favorable travel destination. Film provides knowledge of certain aspects of the destination such as nature, culture and people which result in the construction of the key attitudes towards the country.

Film, is used as an influence to viewer’s choices to travel by the physical attributes and their associated themes, story-lines, events and actors, influencing the audience’ feelings, emotion and attitudes towards the location. Locations and film experiences are enhanced in memories by associating them with the actors, events and the setting through the films journey.

The world of associations and sentiments are all enclosed in the viewers’ minds as memories and obsessions which give meaning to these locations. They then become iconic attractions as a result of being given powerful meanings in film narrations in the mind of the viewer. This memories and the picture created from the film and the meaning to it from the viewer, acts as a stimuli for one to want to visit particular places.

Today, the world’s tourism industry has reached a maturity stage. This is to mean most tourists are more experienced and have become more selective in their choices of holiday destinations.  The industry is also very competitive with many competing interests for visitors as well as sustained destination marketing campaigns from all corners. This is unlike those days when countries spent dollars on attracting tourists through promotion. Tourists today want to reap maximum value of benefits for less as there are many tourism products in the market.

In my view, films are likely to be more successful as a tool for promoting tourism than any other model or strategy. This is a new form of cultural tourism which still receives little attention from most authorities and practitioners due to the lack of knowledge and understanding on the benefits of film on tourism. Researchers suggest that films can have strong influence on tourist decision-making and not only provide short-term tourism revenue, but also long-term prosperity a location.

For a country like Kenya, it is easy for film makers to design storylines and sites that are closely related in which the film involves the audience and an emotional experience which links perfectly with the location’s attributes. Exposure of tourism induced films would provide greater familiarity, attachment, identification and influence to the country’s target market. As a consequence, these films acting as marketing tool becomes the push factor for the audience to visit the location, people, experience and stories as portrayed by the film. The success of such a film would in return be a good predictor of film-induced tourist arrivals.

There has been an increase in number of tourists visiting various destinations featured through films and television series that are not directly related to tourism promotion campaigns. The increasing popularity of film-induced tourism owes to the rise of international travel and the growth of entertainment industry (Hudson & Ritchie, 2006b).

Countries that embrace this mode of destination marketing are likely to reap the most in the long term. Most of those who take up this opportunities, package it as part of their main holiday, thus more bookings without any previous visit or knowledge. It has long been recognized that travel stimuli through marketing efforts and previous travel experience have played an important role in influencing destination choices. Non-touristic-directed stimuli such as films can also have strong influences on tourist decision-making (Iwashita, 2003).

This calls for players in the sector to embrace the film stimuli and include it in their tourist attraction models. The power of film in portraying a positive impression of a country’s image to induce tourist arrivals is clearly shown in various researches (e.g. Tooke & Baker 1996; Iwashita 2006; Kim et al., 2008). Having reviewed the literature, it was found that film-induced tourism is relatively new in tourism research.

Film tourism is likely to draw more benefits to a country and thus creating major economic benefits to the local community. Film locations can be all-year, all-weather attractions which alleviates problems of seasonality in the tourism industry (Beeton, 2004). Riley et al. (1998) studied 12 films and found that the peak of the interest appear after the release of the film, approximately 50% increase in visitation at least five years later and the image is often retained for a long time.

It significantly increases the cultural value for the film location of which a range of cultural meanings and values are communicated. Many heritage sites that serve as film locations gain popularity after the film release because these places acquire specific meaning through film narration. It enhances the locations image and increases the awareness of the host country.

Television series are even more powerful since they continuously reinforce the appeal of the destination that builds top-of the mind awareness. Today, there are many strategies used by various marketers, film is one of the strategies that should be integrated. Tourism boards need to begin forging relationships and provide incentives for film commissions and production companies for promotional purposes.

In the developed economies such as New Zealand, film promotion schemes have been introduced with an aim to facilitate international film-makers and broadcasters in the shooting, production and post-production of quality movies and television programmes. Each film-maker or broadcaster may be granted financial support based on the extent to how the film or programme can uniquely showcase its locations and the economic benefits thereto.

Promotion of hotels, guesthouses and other historic places featured in the films can be a powerful magnet to generate tourism. These places can be differentiated from others through films. This promotion strategy has been used in New Zealand where Tourism New Zealand developed part of its website to specifically promote ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and other film locations throughout the country.

Other marketing strategies which have been used include; guided film tours and film walks. These tours rely heavily on the illustrations from the films so that the tourists can recognize the real landscapes used in the film. The success of film locations rely on the success of films. Some film locations are much more successful than others in terms of the number of tourist arrivals.

I call upon tourism marketers in Africa not to separate their promotional strategies from wider film marketing, as the benefits have far reaching positive effects to the community. Films provide many positive impacts for the location in terms of economic, cultural values and awareness and image. I wish to conclude by the following “film induces tourism and not the other way round”.

The writer is a Chartered Marketer ,Communications professional and a film industry practitioner. Can be reached at timothy.owase@live.com

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