In search of "authenticity" in film tourism experience

Images play a vital role in promoting destinations and are essential in place marketing or place selling. Today, tourist destinations are more and more competitive and try to increase their market shares using a range of promotional tools. It is increasingly the case that tourists visit destinations featured in films which have no direct relation to tourism promotion campaigns. Films influence both the perception of the places in which they are set, and the travel choices by creating a priori images of what a destination and its people may look like. Therefore, they constitute „unofficial place-marketing tools‟. The desire for „authenticity‟ means that tourists are searching for a connection with something that is real and rooted within the destination. The issue of authenticity interests not just tourists, but has implications for a destination as well. However, in the film tourism experience the concept of authenticity can be used to create tourist products which modify local cultural assets to market them as consumable products that suit the tastes of tourists. This commodification process may lead to a loss of authenticity of the local culture and, paradoxically, undermine the authenticity of the tourist experience.