Prioritizing Film Tourism Marketing Activities

Extended Abstract :Since 1990¡ film tourism has become more noticeable and discussed and some countries have started to promote it more actively. The purpose of this research is to identify and prioritize film tourism marketing activities in Iran. For this purpose¡ film tourism marketing activities were discussed in previous research literature. Hudson and Ritchie (2006) created a film tourism marketing opportunities model that formed the basis for later research. In this study¡ this is the type of applied¡ descriptive-survey research incorporated¡ which producers of films and TV series in Tehran used for statistical population and assessment. In order to obtain this information¡ the researcher created a questionnaire¡ which¡ by using judgmental and Snowball sampling method¡ was distributed and completed. 80 questionnaires were distributed and 47 effective questionnaires were collected. The data was analyzed with SPSS software and research findings discovered¡ according to the results of one-sample T test¡ all indicators are very important. The result of the Friedman test prioritization criteria is as follows: leveraging the film¡ generating media publicity¡ encouraging studios to film in location¡ and promoting film locations. Finally¡ components of each of the indicators are prioritized and based on the findings and¡ in order to promote film tourism in the country¡ necessary proposals are presented.
The influence of films on consumers'' lives has led to tourism destination selection. According to Butler (1990)¡ people often choose their tourist destination depending on what they have seen at popular audiovisual means. Spectators¡ therefore¡ become strongly motivated to visit cinematic locations. Films create images for represented places; these images survive for decades and create an identity for the destination. All countries try to promote their tourist products by using various marketing techniques. It seems that¡ while traditional advertising techniques have realized diminishing effectiveness¡ communication¡ via product placement¡ is better targeted¡ more sophisticated and more widely received) Vagionis and Loumioti¡ 2011). In a survey conducted with 140 destination-marketing organizations around the world¡ Hudson and Ritchie (2006) found that 96% of respondents admitted that they should be more active in drawing on tourism-inducing film production (Rosch¡ 2010:224). Nevertheless¡ due to the prevalence of English films¡ there is a shortage of research concerning films shot in non-Western settings and not in the English language. The literature also revealed that there is a deficiency of information and studies on the issue of film-induced tourism in the Middle East (Soliman¡ 2011). Since film tourism is a new concept in Iran''s tourism industry¡ this article seeks to provide guidelines for film tourism marketing opportunities in the country.
This is an applied¡ descriptive-survey study from the research method perspective. Data is gathered through secondary and primary sources. The assessment tool is a questionnaire¡ which is designed based on the Hudson and Ritchie (2006) film tourism marketing opportunities model. The questionnaire is divided into two sections. The first part includes questions regarding the following areas: 1) gender 2) age 3) experience in the film industry 4) making or not making a film intended to introduce a tourist attraction¡ and 5) familiarity with film tourism. The second part asks respondents to indicate on a Likert-type scale of 1 to 5 how important each of the 31 marketing activities is for generating film tourism. The designed questionnaire is delivered to the professors of the field of tourism and its validity is verified. The questionnaires were distributed in April¡ May and June 2012. Producers of film and television series in Tehran form the statistical population. 80 questionnaires using judgmental and snowball sampling were distributed and 47 effective questionnaires were collected.
Discussion and SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) was used for the statistical analysis. After testing the questionnaire¡ the overall Cronbach''s coefficient alpha was 0.93. The Kolmogorov Smirnov test for normality showed that the distribution was normal. Appropriate analysis was made by utilizing one sample T-test and Friedman.