THIS IS AN EDITED TRANSCRIPT OF OUR VIDEO ON SET JETTING. IF YOU PREFER TO WATCH THE VIDEO YOU CAN CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW.
Hello, and welcome to the second in our series of blogs/vlogs where we look behind trends to understand how to make them work for you, demystify them, and help focus your time. This time, we’re going to be talking about set-jetting.
As I said on both this and the previous trend video (Influencers), the key thing we want you to do with trends is not let them overwhelm you, excite you or distract you, but actually focus on those that will really help you. So let’s start by unpicking this month’s trend: set-jetting.
What is set-jetting anyway?
Now, this may sound slightly dismissive, but this is basically a trendy term, which is used to describe the practice of leisure travel to, places that are featured in movies or on television.
And it’s definitely a trend that’s much talked about at the moment. You’ll see in the sharing that there is a link to a “Travel Trend Unpack” by Expedia, which also will give you a little bit more depth on this.
What are some examples? Because I think sometimes it’s easier to understand a trend via an example.
A good example of this is people doing Bridgerton tours, either in Bath, which is one of the main settings, or at any of the key houses featured in the series. We have seen some data around this where visits rocket by a hundred, two hundred percent when a place is featured.
The same is true for Hawai’i after the first series of White Lotus and Sicily after the second one.
Most recently, the Amalfi Coast in Ripley is an example as this drama on Netflix has come out, people are expecting a rush of visitors to an area that’s already under pressure from visitors.
And an older example, would people visiting Broken Hill either for the Mad Max dramas or for Priscilla Queen of the Desert.
And I think when we talk about set-jetting and we talk about films and TV, we need to remember that this is not just a trend that relates to visual media. It can also relate to songs and, music.
So film content tourism, content tourism, literary tourism are all there. We’ve seen people follow the journey in the novel ‘Eat, pray, love’ even before the film came out.
But we’ve seen people follow journeys like the Camino long before there were films about it. We saw that people would follow that journey based on the books.
But set jetting is not new.
Visit Britain produced the first content maps, as far as we can see, back in 1991. (We did ask Visit Britain if they were able to track any of these down. Unfortunately, they were not able to share any of them with me.).
Similarly, we saw this emerging as a theme in academic work, for example, by Doctor Sheila Flanagan, Professor Sue Beeton, with papers going back to 2010. Indeed, I recently saw one by Sheila Flanagan from 2000.
Of course if you’ve got any earlier examples of this, then do, please share them with us in the comments at the end. We’d love to hear about them.
And in fact, I would argue that this trend is even older than that.
The grand tour was an was one of the things that (aside from the archaeological discoveries) was a generation of young British aristocrats who had grown up, studying the Greek and Latin classic texts and who wanted to go and see and visit the places that they had read about.
Interestingly, turning this around, the novel Northanger Abbey could be seen as a classic example of contents tourism or film tourism in that the heroine visits an abbey because she’s been reading romance novels and she equates the Abbey with those novels.
But I still do think it’s actually a it’s a trend that has great potential, but also great potential to create challenges particularly in the space of over-tourism.
Why do I think this is important? Firstly, this trend of seeing a movie or reading a book and wanting to visit the places shown works at the stage of tourism that sometimes hardest to justify spending money on, because it comes in at the “Dreaming stage”.
The ‘Dreaming’ stage is when we’re not actively planning travels, we’re picking up influences and knowledge, around from what’s going on all of the time. So these things can be laid down with us for a very, very long time, and it can inspire us. So you can check out more about this stage. I’ve put in a hyperlink for our members to our Path to Purchase Report the overall one and to the one that deep dives into “Dreaming” so you can read about that.
this means that anything that’s happening in this area is going to be generating for you visitors for a very long time. Yes. There’ll be up peaks. We saw that with the Netflix drama, Stranger Things. We definitely saw an up immediate uptick in people going to visit the particular institution that was featured in that. But the fact is it can arouse an interest in you for places that you read about as a long time. Antarctica is still on my bucket list because I read tales of polar exploration as when I was a child.
Because this aspiration is often laid down many years before, it’s very hard for you to justify relative to a tactical campaign (the fast food of tourism marketing). But we know from marketing theory that this brand building really provides long term benefits.
I think the other thing about this is when we’re in the state, we’re actually very receptive to the messages that come through.
If you look at something like Bridgerton, it can show us a life or a lifestyle, which is highly desirable. Or it could be interesting in the ways of dark tourism (Stranger things). So it can it can stimulate our imagination. And that heightened emotion makes those thoughts and memories and the aspiration to visit much, much more sticky. So the work the skill of the novelist or the TV maker is actually doing your marketing for you.
The other thing about this is that using content in this way is it has trust and empathy. You’re not being sold a destination with people’s wariness around that selling process. It’s shown in a context. It has social proof behind it. And you can look at this in the sense of the topic of our previous webinar on influencers, which you can find a link to as well. Our feelings towards the characters also create that trust and empathy. We want to be where they are.
And now I mentioned that this is not just about books and film.
A recent example for music that’s really stood out is a Taylor Swift song where we’ve seen an upturn in visits to a pub in one of her songs simply because she references the place where she had a breakup. So the Swifties, which is, of course, currently one of the hottest trends in global marketing culture have gone to see that pub for themselves. That’s actually created jobs on the ground. You can read the article (by The Guardian) we’ve posted, is on the record as saying they’ve actually had to lay on extra bar staff to deal with people.
I think the other thing is that this is a cross-cultural phenomenon, which is because it speaks to us being human. Human beings are storytellers and we’re story listeners, and we use those to project our imagination.
So increasingly, some of those stories can actually be influential and can cut across, cultures.
We saw when Chinese tourists first began to go overseas, one of the most visited places in the UK was Cambridge, not just because of Cambridge’s amazing history, it’s a world-famous university, but actually because of a link to a Chinese poet. And suddenly the location of his grave was having to deal with hundreds and hundreds of visitors.
So I think that you know, that is something that we can think about.
What do you need to do about it?
- The first thing is to make sure that you are very clear about your film, your literary, and your music connections or indeed any kind of cultural phenomenon that could link to you.
Let’s take what I would say began as a tenuous example, but it’s now become completely authentic is the Parkes Elvis Festival. This began because of a passion for Elvis by two people who called their events center Gracelands, and it began from there. But that was a plausible thing to hand their hat on because it was called Gracelands already. So when they introduced the Elvis Festival as a way to fill beds that a very hot time of year in regional New South Wales it took off because it had enough social proof, and indeed the slight dagginess of the connection actually worked in its favour. - The second thing I would say is once you know those literary connections, knowing about your customer is the second. So thinking about your customer in the context of what is it that they’re coming to see. As we’ve seen, you know, it can literally be people who grew up reading a poem when they’re at school in China, to somebody watching Bridgerton on Netflix, to somebody who’s a dark tourist because they saw Narcos. All of those are things that inspire and create the desire to travel and can be used to build experiences or drive marketing.
Then there is the challenge of managing demand and overtourism. It’s really important because this you potentially will see those peaks. So just as in every other way, you’re going to have to think about how you manage and curate tourism for that, and how you you signpost people, you manage people, do you want to to limit them, and also telling people how to manage respectfully in certain areas. So that’s, really important to think about.
Some of the specific things that you can do, the first is to celebrate your connections.
One of the articles I’m sharing with you is, there’s a very famous song called Ferry Cross the Mersey. And, of course, Liverpool itself has a very strong connection to music, thanks, to that song, to The Beatles, and to all of its musical connections.
When the local authorities had an option to name a new ferry terminal, they named it after the song. And then subsequently, a tour comes along using the ferry, so it’s actually quite a low-cost tour to do in that sense, using the ferry and taking people and telling people the story of that.
So firstly, you had that option in placemaking to celebrate some of these stories. Secondly, you can then encourage and facilitate people, having and creating experiences around that. Or if you can’t find a business to do this, develop your own as a destination, have businesses come in and tender to do this.
If you decide that you do want more of these tourists, make sure you’re working with whoever is responsible for developing film tourism. Most jurisdictions these days at some point have a connection or someone whose job it is to encourage film and television tourism including those who make films. So are you aware of your contacts? How are you reaching them? And what are you going to do, with them? And how are you building a relationship? And how are you pitching to demonstrate what you can do?
An interesting example of this is, Australian cities are very regularly used, to mimic US cities. Because while we have some world-famous icons such as the Sydney Opera House, many of our streets have quite a reasonably generic look to them. And because we have a film promotion board behind that, we’ve built those options.
Similarly, if we look at somewhere like Broken Hill, those wide-open plains become something for anywhere.
An analogous thing, the weather report is a form of contents tourism, I would argue.
Here in Australia where I’m based, you can actually sponsor to have them come out and showcase your destination for a week in their weather reports. And everyone I know has done that, has said that they’ve definitely seen things that come out of that.
That tends to be a shorter-term spike, but what you can do if you use it judiciously is you can do it in the long term. But for example, in the UK, where they don’t necessarily tend to have it sponsored, it tends to be something where people will send in pictures. So how are you getting local people who are great at generating local content? How are you getting them to forward that so that those can be featured?
Because actually that I noticed the weather forecasters, they’re often current on the imagery and share it and acknowledge place and people. So it can be something where you can reward your influencers for doing this, but going on.
These are all, I think can be particularly good at reaching non-commercial audiences, people who wouldn’t watch, commercial television.
I think these things can also work particularly well if you link it to other activities. I’m gonna use an example. Even though this is now about fifteen years old, I think this is such a great example of how to make content tourism work for you. So about ten, twelve years ago, Visit England ran a campaign called Storybook England, and it was about touring routes connected to children’s literature.
It sat alongside the London Olympics that just promoted that as part of the opening ceremony, But we know that people all over the world, relate to Alice in Wonderland. They relate to Harry Potter. Obviously, a lot of that takes place in Scotland as well, but there are film locations in England. So they curated a series of touring routes linked to those stories, but they didn’t just do that. They worked with the education authority authority to get those books into school where those books were on the curriculum.
So this was something where they aim to create a win-win where they, supported, getting kids reading, but also they worked with grandparents to kids the places . I really love that because there’s something in that for everyone. We know from our research, with visiting friends and relatives with grandparents is that they’re often looking for things to do with grandkids.
We also know that the reach of that, so half million of those touring route packs went into schools in England. That’s an incredible reach and one that was got because it was a mutual benefit. So what’s your Storybook England way of using this? Or if it’s not this, what other things could you do? So for example, if you have something scientific, it’s not necessarily set-jetting, but if you have an amazing scientific story or a connection to place like that, how are you working with partners to get the most of that opportunity coming through?
I think, you just as a quick reminder, really, I’ve made most of the key points that I would like to make up, make on this topic.
But I think one of the things is you can’t do is ignore this. So if you’re sitting there going, okay. They filmed something here or there’s a new book that come out that’s set here. Oh, we don’t want anything to do with that that won’t work.
You actually have to have a plan even if your plan is around discouraging visitors or telling people how to do this and controlling it. Otherwise, it controls you. And if you refer to our blog piece on dark tourism you’ll see a parallel example of how that works, which is if you don’t control the narrative, someone else will if there’s a demand for those visitor experiences.
And the final thing that I think is really important about why set-jetting works and what you can do about it, which is to hold central the concept of storytelling.
Because at the heart, why set-jetting works is because it’s compelling human stories. And this is the most important thing about it. Storytelling is what drives visitation. The narratives that we tell ourselves about what’s going to happen on our holidays, that’s the anticipation.
That’s also the things that we recall and the narratives we build around that shape our memories of the trip much more than all the things that actually happened on that trip. So hold in your head, a key lesson from this is storytelling and how are you Using storytelling to drive the visitors you want, the experiences you want, and to support your PLACE.
So that’s a series of thoughts about set-jetting.
If you would like to know more, please don’t hesitate to put things in the comments to email me at the email address, or just generally get in touch. But we’d also love to hear your stories. So please do share your stories of success (and the ones that didn’t work so well).
Noe sees his role as an advocate for innovation within MyTravelResearch.com to ensure our content is up-to-date and draws on the latest technology and design opportunities to meet or goal of providing accessible and business-focused research data for the Travel and Tourism Industry.
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