We are excited by this year’s Cineposium agenda, writes Geoff Wilcock.

The key areas we have sought to understand are there:

1. Film-induced tourism
2. Regional collaboration
3. Co-production
4. Demonstrating value
5. Marketing of agencies and offices.

By definition, film tourism is likely to be delivered through a portal and so I’ve been doing a lot of desktop research recently on tourism portals. It has led me to understand the value of Destination Management Organisations (DMOs). DMOs are essentially formed by tourism businesses in an area (sometimes with public sector support) whereas, all too often, a portal is setup from the top down.

It is impossible to stimulate the involvement and commitment of front-line tourism businesses from the top. The best approach is to give them the means to work towards a common goal. Even in the unlikely event a central portal raises world awareness it cannot sustain dealing with it. The market always wins in the long run; unless it makes sense for tourism businesses to get involved it is not sustainable from the centre. My example of how not to do it is www.visiteurope.com!

My message is borne of experience from when we first set up web sites and Intranets over thirteen years ago. You have to empower those involved to help create something worthwhile. Otherwise, it eventually runs out of steam.

Does anyone know of any web sites / portals in that category?

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Its good to see such a strong response by the AFCI to film tourism at this years Cineposium in Wellington, New Zealand.

We have been working on developing a film tourism business model that will work for our clients and ourselves. Its slow progress working out the up and downs of options but we think we are getting there.

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Having had a few conversations recently it has become apparent that some old problems are rasing their heads. The main one is sustainability.

If any project is to be sustainable it must be of such a benefit to its target audience that the audience puts time or money into it. This is a clear warning to agencies not to believe they can do such a good job someone else will take it over when the money runs out. It has to make sense to tourism businesses from the start. This leaves two options:

1. Your film tourism idea is so unique that businesses will willing support it through cash or time, in which case why are you doing it?
2. A low cost , low resource way of leveraging film office and agency information in such a way as to not impose a burden but allow the tourism businesses do the work.

I underline my point. No matter how great a web site is it will fail if it does not have money or people to keep it that way. I believe it is possible to combine the information that film offices hold with the latest web technologies to be seen as an important partner but not having to do all the work.

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Had a really good meeting on Friday with a film commission (Scottish Highlands and Islands) and our web tourism expert Rene Looper from 4TM (our partner company). Open Brolly and our partners are undertaking a practical implementation of film tourism.

This involves tourism-friendly accommodation through to post release/broadcast tourism. We see it as a combination of technology and people skills. We will record the project as it now progresses. Its underway!

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