Harry Potter brings tourists to London - Movie tourism conquers the world while Serbia lags behind

("Sex and the City" tour costs tourists USD 40)

Tourists, who are fed up with classic tours in world metropolis, during the recent years, more often opt for destinations where they will see “the city movie sights ". A visitor of New York should set aside USD 40 for a three and a half hour-trip to visit spots where the movie hit, Sex and the City, and tv show were recorded. When already in the Big Apple, a tourist can see the flat of the Friends, sit at the Cosby’ stairs, etc.

A data that every tenth visitor of Great Britain is a movie tourist proves that New Yorkers are not the only ones who discovered the beauties of the movie tourism. This island country generates EUR 2, 7 billion out of that industry. The favorite places of movie tourists are the King’s Cross railway station in London as well as Northumberland where Harry Potter was shpt but also places where Monty Python, James Bond, Da Vinci Code were recorded.

Movie tourism is a young but profitable industrial branch which implies arrivals of tourists to a destination inspired by movies, documentaries and TV shows. A visit to New Zealand increased by 52% from 1999 to 2008 because of the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbits moves. It has been estimated that Stockholm generated profit of EUR 106 mil from its appearance in the Millennium trilogy. A Brussels- based consulting company concluded that 40 million tourists per year chooses their holiday destination based on movies or shows, Ana Ilic, a director of the Serbian movie association, points out in her interview for eKapija.

- Movie industry is extremely important for Serbia although it has not been visible on places where key decisions are made. Movie and TV projects, local and foreign, rely to a large extent on usage of tourist infrastructure in our country. On the annual level, foreign productions in our country have some 15.000 overnight stays in hotels, catering companies make some 90.000 meals for movie and TV teams on site – Ilic points out, adding that the data can be of huge importance for a wide range of business entities to attract as much of productions as possible, and tourists.

The Tourist Organization of Serbia (TOS) says that the official data on that kind of tourism in Serbia do not exist.

- Development of this tourist product is directly connected to movie industry development and we hope that in the future we will be able to offer to our local and foreign guests that kind of an experience within the promotion of Serbia as a tourist destination – TOS says.

(the Roma Barocca filming location in Kosutnjak)

Yugonostalgics – possible visitors

This type of tourism in our country does not get enough attention, which is not the case in other countries. For example, the “Star Wars” filming location in Tunis, natural landscapes of the Sahara where “English Patient” was filmed, the filming location for “The Hobbit” in New Zealand, a nature park in Thailand that served as a shooting location for “The Beach”… all of them represent genuine tourist attractions, Hristina Mikic, executive director of Grupa za kreativnu ekonomiju (GKE – Creative Economy Group), says to eKapija.

- There is no development plan for film tourism in Serbia owing to the lack of resources for its development as a result of the local film industry lagging behind those in other countries – says Mikic.

Two directions of development

A development strategy for film tourism could call for the development of film tourism inspired by Yugoslav movies and for an active policy of promoting filming locations. As Mikic claims, we can now focus on Yugonostalgics because filming locations that can attract the attention of foreign tourists are those where movies were shot in the late 1970s, and these can easily be turned into tourist destinations for film lovers.

Map of filming locations

One of the primary steps towards the development of film tourism in Serbia is to draw a map of filming locations with all the details that could be made available to both foreign and local tourists. Another step is to create tourist routes which could connect filming locations per shooting period or movie topic. Among the most famous maps of filming locations is Visit Britain, and similar maps also exist in the USA, Australia, New Zealand...

Irina Milosevic

Srpska filmska asocijacija Beograd

Turistička organizacija Srbije

Grad Kragujevac

Zavod za zaštitu spomenika kulture Kragujevac

European Commission Brussels

Grupa za kreativnu ekonomiju

GKE

Creative Economy Group

Austrian Development Agency

ADA

Ana Ilic

Hristina Mikic

Djordje Milovanovic

Harry Potter

Monty Payton

James Bond

Da Vinci Code

Millenium

Stockholm

Star Wars

English Patient

Hobbit

Beach

Coriolanus

Kevin Kostner

Everly

Selma Hayek

Maratonci trce pocasni krug

Balkan Express

Ko to tamo peva

Crna macka beli macor

Besa

Mama Lucia

Sofia Loren

film tourism

filming locations

film production

Kings Cross

London

New York

Hollywood

Council of Europe

Ravna Gora

Petrijin venac

Senjski rudnik

Visit Britain