Film Tourism and Desire to Travel
Academic research on film tourism has been around since the early 1990s, but the popularity and extensiveness of research in this area has increased in recent years (Hahm, Upchurch & Wang, 2008; Beeton, 2010), with a number of studies examining the increase of visitor numbers to film locations (Beeton, 2005; Busby, Brunt, & Lund, 2003; Cousins & Anderek, 1993; Croy & Walker, 2003; Gundle, 2002; Kim & Richardson, 2003; Riley, Baker, & Van Doren, 1998; Riley & Van Doren, 1992; Schofield, 1996; Tooke & Baker, 1996; Di Cesare et al., 2009). Similarly, the impact of films on people's image formation has been widely acknowledged in the literature (Butler, 1990; Gartner, 1993; Iwashita, 2003). Films are not generally produced with the intent to attract tourists to a destination, but tend to influence viewers indirectly as a background part of the movie's message (Butler, 1990; Hudson & Ritchie, 2006). This is because they can present millions of viewers with substantial information about a destination, create a first-time image, or alter an existing image in a relatively short period of time (Hahm et al., 2008). Thus, this study makes a modest attempt in the direction of identifying the relationship between film tourism and tourist's desire to travel, which is a cross national comparison between India and China.