Film-induced tourism: a new concern for place marketing managers. [EGPA Annual conference 2021]
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Tourism-a powerful tool used by public authorities to boost their territory's attractiveness is evolving with the audiovisual consumer society. From globalization to the hybridization of tastes, through the multiplication of SVOD platforms, an inherent phenomenon is emerging: film induced tourism. Conceptualized in the early 2000s, it's the subject of researches in tourism, marketing or geography, questioning in turn motivational elements of tourists and the contents of films in order to detect keys of success of this phenomenon. Nevertheless, research in the field of public action is much rarer on the subject, and we observe a gap in the modalities of action of territorial managers concerning the film induced tourism. Therefore, we attempt to explore, through our present research, the issues raised by the film induced tourism for a place, as well as the mechanisms of action of place marketing managers and their practices concerning its management. For this research, we rely on the concepts of cine-tourism (Beeton, 2005, Macionis, 2004 ; O’Connor et al., 2011), as well as tourist attractiveness (Das et al., 2007 ; Fabry, 2009 ; Kadri et al., 2019). Based on an embedded case study (Yin, 2003), we conducted a qualitative study resulting in semi- structured interviews with 13 territorial managers from three different cities which host the shooting of the same television series. As a result, we highlight several tools and methods of action for place branding managers: before welcoming a new film shooting with prospection, internal management or pre-release promotion, as well as after film release with promotional actions on the territory, the development of touristic products or a global offer. Therefore, we bring some elements of discussion, allowing us to question the film induced tourism research in relation to the territorial attractiveness research. This paper suggests the existence of a “hiatus” between the proposals and theoretical models of researchers and what appear to be the "real" expectations and needs of territorial managers on this subject.
