• 1 Joseph S. Nye, Soft Power (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004), 34 and 75.
• 2 Nye, Soft Power, X and 5.

2On the one hand, this ability of certain nations to entice, particularly through their culture or their landscapes, foreign visitors to their countries is part of the attractive “indicators” and “cultural magnets”1 that are potential sources of soft power, which Joseph S. Nye thus defined: “[Soft Power] is the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. It arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideas, and policies. […] Soft Power rests on the ability to shape the preferences of others.”2 Nye has ranked tourism among those potential soft power sources. There is also no doubt that the development of the post-war consumer society, together with globalization, have amplified mass tourism, while fast modern means of transport such as airplanes and now low-cost companies have allowed an ever-increasing number of tourists to travel faster and further at more affordable prices.

• 3 As pointed to by the many debates on the question of film censorship since cinema’s inception.
• 4 The original quotation reads: “Le cinéma, en tant que produit social, ne peut se développer contre (...)

3On the other hand, visual arts have also played their part in attracting tourists to specific spots, wherever those may be. As a 20^th century newly born visual, ‘seventh’ art, cinema comes to mind as a force that can entice tourists. Its growing popularity with an increasing number of people has quickly drawn attention to its potential as a social influencer3 and bearer of specific ideologies, as pointed to by Anne-Marie Bidaud: “[…] cinema, as a social product, cannot develop against the very society that produces it; as an industry sponsored by the largest American financial groups, it cannot but support their interests, whether economic or ideological.”4 

• 5 Nye, Soft Power, 47 and 17.

4Cinema can therefore be a vector of soft power: “Pictures often convey values more powerfully than words,” and through their global distribution, films and television series are important sources of soft power, notably the United States’: “Much of American Soft Power has been produced by Hollywood […].”5

• 6 In 2018, in a pre-covid era, the top 10 cinema markets represented 7 954 million admissions, i.e. a (...)
• 7 Peter Bolan and Kelly Davidson, “Film Induced Tourism in Ireland: Exploring the Potential” (in A. B (...)

5But as a global mass medium,6 cinema can also trigger the interest of spectators in the places featured on screen: “Just as paintings whetted the appetite of tourists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to visit particular destinations, film has become the modern-day equivalent for the tourist.”7  Sue Beeton has also underlined that aspect in her writings, whether it be for the silver screen or TV:

• 9 Graham Busby and Julia Klug, “Movie-induced Tourism: the Challenge of Measurement and other Issues, (...)

6In fact, the films’ and TV series’ soft power to highlight specific spots in the eyes of spectators —who are also potential tourists— has thus generated film-induced tourism that can be defined as a “tourist visit to [a] destination or attraction as a result of the destination featured on the cinema screen, video or television,”9 the definition being then widened by Sue Beeton in 2005:

• 11 Stefan Roesch, The Experience of Film Location Tourists (Bristol: Channel View Publications, 2009), (...)

7To which can be added that some shooting locations also attract fans/tourists while they are being used: “Film tourism is a specific pattern of tourism that drives visitors to see screen places during or after production of a feature film or a television production.”11 

• 12 Roesch, The Experience of Film Location Tourists, 8.
• 13 Sarah Kelley, “Tourism, Cinema and TV Series Conference,” Transatlantica, Issue 2, 2018. https://jo (...)
• 14 Though it became a box office hit in many countries, the film was not very successful in Austria no (...)
• 15 Salzburg Panorama Tour, https://www.panoramatours.com/en/salzburg/tour/original-sound-of-music-tour (...)

8Film-induced tourism is not a contemporary development in the tourism business, and for example “The Mutiny of the Bounty (1935) was one of the first feature films to cause major tourism influxes to a film location,”12 and at the 2018 Tourism, Cinema and TV Tourism conference,13 Joël Augros pointed out the fact that the 1965 American box office success of The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965) triggered some interest in Austria. American tourists (and others) then flew to the country as they wanted to retrace the footsteps of the Van Trapp family at the places used to shoot their on-screen adventures. This first surprised the locals14 before they rapidly seized the opportunity. The local company that had furnished cars and buses for the film production thus quickly adapted, creating its The Sound of Music Tour. This Salzburg Panorama Tours company consequently capitalized on what is now called film-induced tourism and it continues to do so nowadays as its tour “seems to have great appeal for some Asian nationalities.”15

• 16 For more on this topic, see for example Daniel Steinhart, Runaway Hollywood (Oakland: University of (...)
• 17 Château de La Roche Goyon/ Fort La Latte. https://www.lefortlalatte.com and https://www.facebook.co (...)
• 18 https://www.tunisiatourism.info/fr/articles/star-wars-en-tunisie-aux-origines-des-skywalker <accessed on July 12, 2021>.
• 19 https://www.alnwickcastle.com/explore/whats-here/broomstick-training <accessed on July 12, 2021>.
• 20 Warner Bros. Studio Tour-The Making of Harry Potter. https://www.wbstudiotour.co.uk <accessed on February 10, 2021>.
• 21 Peter Bolan and Lindsay Williams, “The role of Image in Service Promotion : Focusing on the Influen (...)

9The film-induced impact of some places can indeed be long-lasting, as exemplified by Fort La Latte, located on the French emerald coast of Brittany, that still financially benefits from the 1957 local runaway shooting16 of The Vikings (Richard Fleischer, 1958),17 or by the link between Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) and Tunisia where the saga’s fans have been going for many years to walk in the footsteps of Luke Skywalker on Tatooine.18 There is also little doubt that in the years to come, there will still be many wizard fans retracing Harry Potter’s steps on the lawns of Alnwick castle (where he took his first broomstick riding lesson19) and in Gloucester cathedral, Lacock abbey, at King’s Cross station or at Warner Bros. Studio Tour-The Making of Harry Potter in Leavesden.20 Those places bear witness to the global ‘Potter Mania’ that developed after the release of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Chris Columbus, 2001). The Harry Potter franchise and its 8 feature films are all the more interesting as far as film-induced tourism is concerned as they highlight, together with other successful franchises like Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings, “the additional benefits of repeated exposure that a ‘film franchise’ brings over one-off ‘stand alone’ movies.”21

• 22 Busby and Klug, “Movie-induced Tourism: the Challenge of Measurement and other Issues,” 318.
• 23 Roesch, The Experience of Film Location Tourists, .
• 24 https://www.paris-expo-portedeversailles.com/fr/site/paris-expo-porte-de-versailles/manifestation/e (...)
• 25 https://fortheloveofharry.com/2019-harry-potter-events/ <accessed on July 13, 2021>.
• 26 Roesch, The Experience of Film Location Tourists, 3.
• 27 Much to the dismay of some French people, politicians and union leaders who wanted “Mickey, [to] go (...)
• 28 For more on this see Janet Wasko, Understanding Disney (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2001).
• 29 Though the access of foreign films to the Chinese screens is still very much limited.
• 30 MPA, Theme Report 2019, 11 and 13. https://www.mpa-apac.org/research-docs/2019-theme-report/ <accessed on April 27, 2020>.

10In fact, film (and TV)-induced tourism has multiple aspects, as defined for example by Busby and Klug with 9 forms of movie tourism and their ensuing characteristics.22 As said before, many tourists indeed wish to retrace the footsteps of their screen heroes as described by Stefan Roesch in The Experiences of Film Location Tourists.23 This also includes those who want to sit on the iron throne featured in the touring Game of Thrones exhibition,24 or fans taking part in Harry Potter’s conventions organized at Leavesden.25 Those different aspects of film-induced tourism highlight the fact that modern blockbusters and other popular film and TV productions, together with their runaway status, can trigger profits for ancillary markets that are not just linked to selling toys, DVDs or T-shirts reading ‘May the force be with you’ at the time of a film’s release. Consequently, many countries have now grasped the benefit they can derive from film-induced tourism, as pointed out for Great Britain by Stefan Roesch: “In 1996, the British Tourism Association -today’s VisitBritain- was the first tourism organisation that tried to capitalise on film tourism through the publication of a movie map featuring locations from various films shot in Great Britain.”26 France itself spared no effort27 to be the European country that would host a Disney park on its territory, so as to capitalize on jobs and benefits thanks to tourists attracted by the Disney universe (while the company thus increased its soft power and eventually profits through such a site).28 The Disney park that opened in Shanghai in 2016 once again highlights this factor in a country where cinema admissions have increased to the point of making China one of the leading global box office markets in 2019 generating $9.3 billion,29 just behind the North American one and its $11.4 billion.30

• 31 Sue Beeton, Film-Induced Tourism, 2^nd Edition, Kindle edition, (Bristol: Channel view publications, (...)
• 32 Beeton, Film-Induced Tourism (2005), 11.

11The development of film-induced tourism and its multiple aspects have thus grown into a field worthy of academic interests, and the aforementioned authors, alongside others, have brought to the fore its different aspects and intricacies as “How, when and why a film (movie or TV series) inspires people to visit a particular locality is an important aspect that requires further study” so as to grasp how the “studies of the history of film and tourism assist in our understanding of tourism development as well as that of film-induced tourism.”31 The present issue of InMedia thus intends to focus on some aspects of film-induced tourism, its scope being based on the “broad brush” of Sue Beeton’s definition.32

• 33 Roesch, The Experience of Film Location Tourists, 7-8.

13Countries, places and buildings also have their part to play in film-induced tourism. They can be “on-locations,” and so “a film location tourist, whether pre-planned or by coincidence, is a person who actively visits a precise on-location that has been used for shooting a scene or scenes that were portrayed on the cinema or television screen.”33 Such is the subject of three of our articles. In “Beyond Aesthetics: Hollywood Studios, Financial Incentives and Film-induced Tourism,” Joseph Armando Soba analyses to what extent Louisiana has benefited from film-induced tourism as an impact of its financial efforts to lure Hollywood studios to shoot on location in the state. Giulia Lavarone’s “Gazing without Risk” explores how Italian heritage is presented through the narrative and stylistic features of The Great Beauty (Paolo Sorrentino, 2013), and the ways to consume as a tourist suggested by the tourism industry through its interpretation of the movie. And in “Travel-inspiring skeletons in Spectre and Coco – Film tourism and the Día de Muertos in Mexico,” Viola Rühse studies how those two big-budget films featuring elements of the Día de Muertos have benefited tourism to Mexico and generated a more positive, though sometimes biased, image of the country.

• 34 Roesch, The Experience of Film Location Tourists, 7.

14Places can also be “off-locations,”34 bringing to mind the film-based attractions, studios and numerous film theme parks that exist throughout the world. In “A Magic Beyond All We Do Here: Musical and Sonic Worldbuilding at Harry Potter Tourist Attractions,” Daniel White thus relies on the not-often used musical angle (and the provided web links enable readers to listen to some music) to analyse the use of music and sound at four distinct attractions related to the Harry Potter franchise as music is shown to draw variously on motivic memory and nostalgia, heightening or intensifying emotional connections and in each case enabling the imaginative inhabitation of a fantasy world.

• 35 Beeton, Film-Induced Tourism, 2^nd Edition, Kindle edition, 24.

15Finally, the case study approach whose importance is underlined in Sue Beeton’s Film-Induced Tourism and on which many academic articles are based also led to the choice of featuring three interviews in the present issue. As “in a case study the context is integral to understanding the case,”35 those film and TV-series based interviews highlight some local aspects of film and TV-induced tourism and may inspire future research.