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Tours to Movie Sites Are Getting Popular Worldwide

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Travel Articles >> Locations

A new branch of tourism has appeared in the world – tours to the sites of shooting blockbusters and serials. Set jetting, tours to sites where feature films had been shot, are getting more and more popular. For example, after the film “The Da Vinci Code” had appeared, the Rosslyn Chapel was visited by approximately 160 thousand people, which is five times more than earlier. New Zealand (“The Lord of the Rings”) and Great Britain (“Harry Potter”) has become leaders in the number of tourists in the recent years.

The table on one of the walls of the Rosslyn Chapel, Edinburgh, says, “Underpasses shown in the film “The Da Vinci Code” do not exist”. The Scottish tour operator “VisitScotland” together with “Sony Pictures” promotes routes from “The Da Vinci Code”, and the railway company “Eurostar”, the official film partner, not only offers tourist packets that include accommodation in Parisian hotels, mentioned in the book, but in 2006 also created a web-quest, during which the participants of the virtual trip from London to Paris had to work out puzzles and receive prize discounts for “Eurostar”.

The sites of shooting films about Harry Potter have become another popular tourist direction. The special “Hogwarts Express” (in reality, the train “Olton-Hall” No. 5972) was launched in Great Britain. You may go from Oxford to Carlisle and back for $200. During the journey for “Harry Potter’s fans”.

Within the tour “To Harry Potter’s Sites” tourists are offered a journey to the Borough Market, where certain movie episodes had been shot, as well as to the London Zoo, “where Harry realized that he could understand the language of serpents”. Private schools send the whole classes on this tour.

After appearance of the movie “The Lord of the Rings”, the number of tourists in the New Zealand increased by 30% and made up the record number of 2.4 million people in 2006. The New Zealand guides tell the already anecdotic story of the farmer Yan Alexander. On a fine day of 1998, when the simple sheep farmer was watching a rugby match on TV, the door bell rang. Members of Peter Jackson’s film crew stood at the threshold. They asked for farmer’s permission to shoot fragments of the film “The Lord of the Rings” on his land. Supposedly, Alexander had grumbled something like, “What did you say? What kind of lord?” On the whole, he agreed quite reluctantly. However, after appearance of the first part of the trilogy in 2001, the hereditary farmer realized that he is living on the gold mine. Without investing a single dollar in advertising, he created a prosperous tourist agency “Rings Scenic Tours”. Its site is translated into eight languages. The minimal cost of a one day tour through Hobbitania makes up $50. Besides excursion to the holes where hobbits had lived and to that very fir-tree where Bilbo Baggins’s birthday was celebrated, the visitors are offered paintball, sky-jumping and helicopter flights.

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Article Submitted On: January 11, 2008