Feb 05

Movies Inspiring Tourism

Eileen Earley

by Eileen Earley
Category: Where in the World

Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter We saw it with The Hangover with Facebook promotions about Las Vegas vacations, there was so much buzz about Up in the Air promoting a global airline and hotel brand and now, watch out for travel trends from Alice in Wonderland?

This morning I was surprised but more than anything I was really excited to hear Oxford, the city of dreaming spires, has plans to leverage the buzz and excitement about Tim Burton’s latest adventure in Wonderland.  In college, I spent my junior year studying in Oxford and I was lucky enough to have an English courses that focused on the works of Lewis Carroll, headlined of course with Alice.  When we had completed the book and a deep dive into its’ meanings, our professor took us on the Alice Tour which took us to Binsley Village, Christ Church (where portions of the Harry Potter flicks are filmed), and along the River Thames, where the story was first told.

While Oxford didn’t aid in the filming of this movie, they can certainly stand to gain tourism revenue with the star-studded cast bringing to life a story that emerged from its’ backyard.  So, if you’re looking to attend the Mad Hatter’s tea party and follow Alice’s footsteps, take a trip across the pond and see it all first hand.  What a great way to recognize an international pop culture trend and bring it back to it’s roots.  Cheers, Oxford!

This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 11:48 am and is filed under Where in the World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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4 Responses to “Movies Inspiring Tourism”

  1. Harper Babin Says:
    February 18th, 2010 at 3:04 pm

    Movies have the opportunity to promote a variety of things, such as: fashion, trends, slang, and tourism! Depending on the producer and directors mindset as to what they choose to captivate to their audiences they have the opportunity to shed light on certain destinations to all of their viewers. No matter how many times I watch the movie “Sex & the City” it makes me want to jump on a plane and head straight to NYC. Or more exotically when I watched “Fool’s Gold” it made me research the movie to find out what part of the Caribbean it took place in because it was so extremely beautiful! I feel sometimes directors focus more on shedding light on where their shooting to purposely promote the the location for tourism. Sometimes certain locations get lost in the shuffle of all the places to travel to so why not promote unique places that need some tourists. I mean hundreds to thousands to millions of people will watch their movie so take hold of that opportunity. I’m happy to see movies taking on this new trend of promoting new or much-needed travel locations. As a whole it is helping our world-wide economy.

  2. Josh Mercaldo Says:
    March 1st, 2010 at 5:57 pm

    Hi Eileen -

    While not a Hollywood blockbuster, Drake Cooper created a brandtainment campaign for Idaho tourism called the Great Idaho Getaway Project. One of the main components is a 30 minute film that like your examples above, help create awareness to Idaho in a new, unique way. http://www.greatidahogetaway.org.

    Enjoy and thanks for the interesting blog post.
    Josh

  3. jack purdy Says:
    March 16th, 2010 at 10:44 am

    I did a summer course at Christ Church in 2009. The father of the inspiration for Alice (Alice Liddell) was Dean of the college and Lewis Carroll, real name William Dodgson, was a mathematics tutor there. On a tour, we were shown “Alice’s door,” which Miss Liddell and her sisters came through whenever they came out to play. I don’t know if Christ Church will try to cash in on Tim Burton’s film, however. For one thing, it has almost no resemblance to the original story. For another, Harry Potter fans have overrun Christ Church for some years now, eager to get a look at Hogwarts Hall, which was modelled after the dining hall at the college. I was amused when a guide told me that some children, when told this isn’t really Hogwarts, nod knowingly, while others become absolutely hysterical, like a 4 year old being told there is no Santa.

  4. buy movies dvd Says:
    June 3rd, 2010 at 10:00 am

    There was a bollywood movie called Pyar To Hona Hi Tha which promotes travel to UK and also was a great movie to watch.

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