Movie Med

Britain offers filmakers scenery and historic buildings: in return, films offer massive publicity. A new holiday aims to promote some famous UK locations.

Britain has always been a draw for film makers keen to use authentic outdoor locations. The combination of varied scenery and ancient castles has proved too good an opportunity to waste and films such as Mel Gibson’s 1996 version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (filmed in three separate Scottish castles) and the comedy classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail have been made in the UK.

New Film Package Tour Announced to Attract Visitors

Various agencies have used film to promote different regions of the United Kingdom in the past; but on 29 April 2010 a tourism initiative with a twist was launched. In an astute piece of marketing, the car maker Vauxhall has joined up with the UK’s tourism agency, Visit Britain (visitbritain.com), to offer a new package holiday (Press Association).

As you might expect, given the nature of Vauxhall’s business, the product on offer is very much a road trip. Starting in Scotland – home of filming for much of the Harry Potter series, not to mention blockbusters such as Rob Roy and Braveheart – the tour covers over 1,000 miles via Chatsworth (Pride and Prejudice), Haddon Hall (The Other Boleyn Girl) to Sheffield’s Job Centre, where the boys from The Full Monty tapped their feet in the dole queue.

Next there’s a swing into the south of England via various locations in London before the visitor dips into south Wales and finishes in Cornwall. In total, ten different stops cover 23 locations which between them have contributed to the making of 39 films, many of them international blockbusters (Yorkshire Post).

Film Tourism in the UK

Film locations have always drawn the crowds: according to the RAC, over half of Britons have expressed an interest in visiting them. Visit Britain has a special page dedicated to film locations, with two London walking tours with a film theme and a focus on five great British cult films (Get Carter, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Quadrophenia, Trainspotting and Withnail and I).

The current holiday, though a new twist in that it’s a package, certainly isn’t the first film tourism initiative launched by Visit Britain: in 2007 the tourism organisation ran an Elizabethan-themed campaign to coincide with the release of Elizabeth, the Golden Age. Visitors were directed towards a range of Tudor themed attractions, including Winchester Cathedral.

Elsewhere, other organisations have jumped firmly on the bandwagon. Beautiful Britain (beautifulbritain.co.uk) has a film location page, while Dumfries and Galloway tourist board currently produces and distributes a leaflet guiding visitors to locations from, among others, the cult horror movie The Wicker Man and the action thriller Mission Impossible.

Focussing in on films is probably a wise move. A 2005 study by Oxford Economics quoted a figure of around 10% of all tourism trips to the UK being attributable to the impact of UK films. The same study put the estimated tourism value of the UK film industry at a staggering £1.6 billion and a further study by the same company two years later indicated that this might be a conservative value.

It certainly seems to be the case that individual attractions benefit, with Alnwick Castle’s association with Harry Potter thought to be responsible for netting it an increase in visitor numbers of 120% (Visit Britain) while The Scotsman reported in 2007 that Rosslyn Chapel, near Edinburgh, experienced an increase in visitor numbers from 30,000 to 120,000 a year as a result of appearing in The Da Vinci Code.

Given the enormous potential impact of the dedicated - or even the casual - filmgoer on the economy through day trips and overnight stays, its unlikely that the so-called 'Brit Flick pilgrimage' will be the last film-related tourism initiative, as Britain's towns, villages and even Job Centres continue to attract those keen to see the locations of their favourite films.