ROSIE WILLOUGHBY
Dissertation
The motivations and experiences of The Lord of the Rings-inspired tourists to Aotearoa New Zealand
For my final year dissertation, inspired by my time in New Zealand, I decided to research how The Lord of the Rings franchise has impacted the country's tourism sector in the twenty years since the first film was released.
I interviewed participants from six countries from a variety of backgrounds, including themed entertainment producers, music distributors and university students. I was supervised by Dr Alex Seal.
For this year long project, I was awarded a First.
Read the Abstract below.
Tourism to Aotearoa New Zealand has altered dramatically since the release of the six films of The Lord of the Rings franchise, between 2001 and 2014. Transitioning from adrenaline-seeking youth to film-inspired tourists, this leads to shifts in the offerings of tourist organisers within NZ. In this dissertation, I research the motivations and experiences of LOTR-inspired tourists through key touristic concepts – namely, the tourist gaze, authenticity, hyperreality and playfulness. I employ a qualitative methodology to answer this, conducting semi-structured online interviews with eleven participants from six countries. There is little previous work on the touristic experiences of themed entertainment professionals, therefore their inclusion in my study fills a research gap.
I found that tourists engage with filming sites differently according to their motivations for travel. While some tourists would like to learn about the production of the films (‘reality’), others suspend their disbelief and engage playfully with the sites, to feel as if they are ‘in’ Middle-earth (the ‘fantasy’ setting of the series). Refuting arguments of hyperreality, participants actively negotiated how they interacted with sites, choosing to visit different locations according to which motivations they wanted to fulfil. Tourism is thus a playful release of their fantastical desires to engage closely with media. Their visits rewarded them with subcultural capital on their return in the form of photos and souvenirs, which affected their later engagement with the films. NZ’s close branding association with LOTR - which has in some ways overlaid itself onto the country’s physical geography- must be acknowledged and further investigated, owing to the potential for the further marginalisation of indigenous cultures. Despite its small-scale, my research offers several avenues for further study, including real-time location walkthroughs with tourists and interviews with locals to identify how national identity has evolved since LOTR. My findings are also valuable to business interests in understanding the motivations of film-inspired tourists, who can thus develop their attractions accordingly.