Just who should be taking part in and leading film tourism? This appears to me to be the hard question, and the one delaying uptake of the confirmed economic benefits, particularly in the UK.

There are four clearly interested parties for any significant development of film tourism: a tourism agency, a screen agency / film office, an economic development agency and tourism businesses.

The organisation and relationships necessary to deliver meaningful results on the front line of tourism requires significant input from tourism businesses themselves and not just a top-down approach from agencies that find difficult to resource and co-ordinate.

Giving Tourism Celebrity Status

The idea of allowing tourism business take control of film tourism in their area may be unusual to some, particularly when co-ordination and logistics are considered. However, in this new age of the Internet (Web 2.0) it is possible for agencies to market regions and empower businesses at the same time.

The benefits of using Web 2.0 techniques to market regions and countries and then deliver content and services to business groups in a cost-effective way is powerful. To be sustainable there must be a commercial rationale. If marketing is entirely centralised there has to be some soviet-style delivery vehicle (‘one size fits all’) with onerous tracking and recording. Why not provide the marketing tools that businesses can simply make use of with the added benefit that marketing and activity information comes back to the agencies with little effort?

The key to maintaining standards and some element of control is to engage with tourism businesses through the destination management organisations emerging throughout the country (DMOs). They are close to the businesses but will actively work with a screen agency or film office.

What would these ‘tools’ consist of? That’s relatively easy. Screen agencies and film offices have a wealth of information on film production in their area. It is a matter of deciding policy on holding and disseminating information in a form that is usable by individual business. Even starting from scratch this is not an onerous task as virtually every screen agency in the UK has a database. We can push significant benefits without implying the need for considerable additional resources in the agencies.

The types of services that can be delivered are many and include:
1.On demand movie maps; by director, writer or genre which can be embedded onto individual business web sites for their locality;
2.Association of locations with tourism businesses, with a feed of up-to-date information on recent filming activity;
3.Inclusion of communities who will hold information that no one else has – for example the stories of extras;
4. Engagement with providers of Specialist businesses such as location tours;
5.Specialist film / TV production accommodation;
6.Enthusiasts and film tourists can use the Internet to provide information that will market a DMO area or an agency area – perhaps a Facebook or TripAdvisor group?

What would a model look like?

1. Tourism agencies promote an area or country in domestic and overseas marketing;
2. Screen agencies, commissions and film offices begin to hold their information on historical productions in a way that is suitable for releasing to tourism businesses via marketing groups and DMOs. This might be supported by regional development agencies.
3. Tourism business look to ways to make use of that information and to add to it. Simple tools are available for them to feed back into the process, such as questionnaires or web tracking tools.

What do you think? Too simple? Too complex? Post your comments outlining your ideas for film tourism and help contribute to the debate.