Screen tourism

Although by no means the only major piece of filming commissioned in Northern Ireland, Game of Thrones is considered the region’s most critical in terms of putting Northern Ireland on the world map as a production location.

Its huge fan base has set it apart from other notable productions filmed in Northern Ireland such as Dracula Untold, Your Highness and hit drama The Fall, with huge potential recognised in growing the tourism sector by attracting fans of the production.

Although the popularity of Game of

Thrones went largely underestimated initially, the value of correctly marketing such a successful product can be evidenced in the likes of Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, used as Hogwarts in the early Harry Potter films, which generated an estimated £4.3 million screen tourism spend in 2014. Bampton, the village used for Downtown Abbey has generated an estimated £2.7 million and more nationally, Norway and New Zealand have witnessed huge international spend increase as a result of their association with Frozen and The Lord of the Rings, respectively.

While Northern Ireland has sought to capitalise on its association with Game of Thrones and other major productions, it does not have a strategy specifically aimed at screen tourism. In 2016, Tourism NI commissioned Olsberg SPI, following on from work undertaken for Creative England in 2014, to study the value of screen tourism in Northern Ireland. Due to be published later in the year, the report has yet to be released.

However, a summary of the key findings has been released to agendaNi from Tourism NI. The findings state:

Working collaboratively to accelerate the growth of tourism

• awareness of the region is high and a “significant” number of tourists have travelled to the area who would not have done so without its screen links;

• a conservative estimate of the value of screen tourism per annum is £18 million. This figure is based on the estimate that 55,000 extra people are travelling to Northern Ireland every year with screen content as their main reason for travel;

• if screen tourism continues on its current trajectory over the next two years, there is the potential to grow the market to £33 million, with opportunity for further product development and merchandise; and

• outside of “international core screen tourists” a potential market of 167,000 visitors are attracted to Northern Ireland due to its links with film or television drama.

Stefano Baschiera believes that the current success of Northern Ireland in attracting major productions, and as a result harbouring of screen tourism, are rooted in the attraction of major investment for the filming of City of Ember back in 2007.

“Previous to this Belfast was largely used for filming because of its own storyline and often it would have film crews coming in from places like England, for example, for one day shooting and leaving again. This relationship meant that Northern Ireland’s film industry got no knowledgetransfer benefit and there was next to no significant expenditure increase from them being there,” he says.

“With City of Ember this changed, the large inward investment utilised the film studio space available at Titanic. On one hand, it helped showcase the advantages of Northern Ireland as a production destination with its variety and closeness of infrastructure and the fact that it was English-speaking. On the other hand, it also helped highlight that Northern Ireland could logistically handle such a large production and that the skillset existed.”

Baschiera agrees that the lack of hard data makes analysing the benefits of investments in the sector against the costs difficult but believes that some of the benefits are clear.

He adds: “A generalisation is to look at what Northern Ireland production offered 10 years ago and what is on offer now. The ability to host, manage and execute productions of such volume is a great skillset when selling Northern Ireland for future productions. Northern Ireland