Home Based Travel Agent - May 2008 - (Page 53)

New Jersey to see the church, pizzeria, strip club, etc. featured on The Sopranos— or a multi-day, multi-city itinerary, like a Lord of the Rings vacation in New Zealand, where the movie trilogy was filmed. And there’s plenty in between. Fans of The Da Vinci Code could spend an afternoon touring the story’s locales in London or Paris alone, or take a one-week journey retracing Robert Langdon’s code-breaking trail throughout France and Britain. While tour operators offer many escorted choices for trips with a literary or film theme, you can do them on your own with some guidance from tourist offices.The Visit New England organization, representing six states, publishes a guide to visiting the former homes of such writers as Robert Frost, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson and Dr. Seuss.VisitBritain’s website provides suggested itineraries based on the life and writings of Jane Austen and Beatrix Potter, as well as one filled with James Bond-related sites. The U.K. tourist board also has created a map of movie locales for the Oscar-nominated Elizabeth: The Golden Age, just as the Belgian Tourist Office has done for the Colin Farrell/Ralph Fiennes pic In Bruges and the Santa Barbara, CA, visitors bureau for Sideways wine country (all the maps can be found online). Other U.S. and international tourism agencies offer similar information for their literary- and screen-related destinations. Some tours themed around a movie or book have been offered for many years, thanks to the perennial popularity of the movie or book—think Sound of Music itineraries in Salzburg, Austria. Others seize on a hot property of the moment, like the Bridges of Madison County trips that stimulated a tourism boom to Winterset, Iowa, in the mid ’90s. Now, Winterset—or even Salzburg— may never have attracted so many visitors if it weren’t for the famous book or movie set there. But even major tourist The pier at Hanalei Bay on Kauai’s north shore was used in numerous fims, including South Pacific, Miss Sadie Thompson, The Wackiest Ship in the Army, Beachhead and several others destinations like New York, San Francisco and Hawaii have gotten in on the “you’ve seen it on screen, now see it for real” act. And such tours offer travelers a new way to look at a place they may already be familiar with. Bryan Rice, owner of San Francisco Movie Tours, says his company’s operation is “a city tour with a movie theme.” He adds, “We can now boast that we go more places in San Francisco than any tour company. In addition, our guests get to watch over 70 clips from 55 movies made in San Francisco.” Rice’s company is part of a network, Movie Tours, Inc., that has licensees in several destinations, including Monterey, CA, and Boston. Bob Jasper, president of Movie Tours, who started the company after his Hawaii Movie Tours on Kauai proved successful, says the network will be expanding to Los Angeles, San Diego and Oahu within a year. “It is probably one of the most entertaining, fun type [of] tours in the country,” he says. The expansion of Jasper’s business from his own Kauai operation into a nationwide network reflects the growth of the market. Another indicator: An International Conference on Impact of Movies and Television on Tourism was held in 2006 in Hong Kong, with Jackie Chan as honorary chairman. There’s even an Association of Tours for TV and Movies (ATTAM) that represents operators. Georgette Blau, who founded ATTAM last year, says that when she launched her company, On Location Tours, in New York City in 1999, there were fewer than half a dozen such operators in the world. Today, less than a decade later, there are close to a hundred. She attributes the growth to traveler demand for “more interactive and niche tours” and says Hollywood has also done its part by filming on location more frequently. “People are seeing things filmed in restaurants and boutiques and houses instead of HB studio backlots,” remarks Blau. M AY 2008 Home-BasedTravelAgent 53

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Home Based Travel Agent - May 2008

Home Based Travel Agent - May 2008 Contents Editor’s Note: When It’s Just Not Worth It Publisher’s Note: Never Underestimate Your Lifeline: When Things Go Wrong, You May Need To Agent Spotlight: Odyssey Travel’s Michelle Duncan New Technology: Resources That Can Help You Quickly Industry News: Costa Names Field Sales Director Hot Deals: From the Caribbean to Canada and London Success Stories Independent Associations Southern Swing Mexico Dominican Republic Cover Story: Australia Family Trips Theme Tours New Products: Urban At Ease Laptop Messenger Bag

Home Based Travel Agent - May 2008

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