“Film induced tourism: an investigation into motivations of film tourists who choose Edinburgh as a holiday destination”

Abstract

There are many studies that highlight the importance of this new phenomenon called film-induced tourism within the tourism industry. However there is a gap in the literature in relates this phenomenon and Edinburgh as a tourist destination. With the aim to bridge this gap the purpose of this research is to explore motivations of film tourists who choose Edinburgh for holidays. Furthermore four objectives have been set up. Firstly, to identify the profile of film tourists who visit Edinburgh as well as to investigate the experiences and activities that film tourists enjoy visiting. Moreover, to ascertain what they are looking for specially when visiting Edinburgh. Finally finding out if Edinburgh meets the expectations of film tourists. These objectives have been achieved by a quantitative approach through face-to-face structured questionnaires distributed to the visitors of different film attractions/tour around Edinburgh. Findings emerged throughout this research would define the film tourist in Edinburgh as a young person who comes from Europe and they are willing to travel with friends or a partner. Its pull factors for travelling are landscape/scenery and monuments/building focusing on film locations and film sets when they visit film attractions. Regarding push factors they would seek unique and new experiences. The findings also suggest that Edinburgh meets the expectations of the film tourists who visit the city. Despite having achieved the proposed objectives, which show the overall success of the methodology design, some limitations have emerged through the data collection process. The main one is the impossibility of achieving the whole amount of respondents for the size of sample proposed that could cause a lack of generality in the findings emerged.