Collaboration and Destination Marketing: Creating Film-Induced Tourism

Abstract

Increased attention to film tourism processes has driven the need for research on its relevance to destination marketing. Film tourism involves different actors with various interests, often making collaboration challenging. This study aims to understand how film tourism can succeed within complex processes involving multiple actors by using in-depth semistructured interviews. Using actor-network theory and emphasizing the relational network in the case study of film location bus tours, it shows that human and nonhuman actors, the tourism and film industries, film commissions, advertising agencies, residents, tourists, ports, and buses interact to create film tourism. This study shows that film tourism networks that were formed successfully are disbanded because of the changing relations between human and nonhuman actors in film tourism. The analysis reveals that power lies in the network created by collaboration among all actors, and the future of film tourism development relies on how heterogeneity is processed. It critically examines the binary of host and guest in tourism and attempts to transcend it constructively. Theoretically, it extends the context of how different actors’ interests are effectively processed. This study contributes toward enhancing sustainable tourism by reflecting the nature unique to the region, integrating with films shot in a destination to revitalize the regional economy.