Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences (FASS)

This paper is particularly focused on film-induced tourism investigation as well as its cultural promotion and cultural change effect that impact on both the tourist destinations and the tourist demands. The case studies include the famous Transylvania, Romania as well as the two comparative destinations in Southeast Asia namely Bali in Indonesia, and Penang in Malaysia. Although tourism planners have limited control over the content of the films produced in the respective destinations and how the destinations are being portrayed in films, it is reflected in our studies that, the imaginary, visual representations of the destinations, albeit negative or distorted from their original identities, are still useful and viable to promote the tourist destinations. The three discussion cases form up the stratification of multiple stages in terms of implementing film-induced tourism strategies to promote their destinations, spanning from one of the oldest film-induced tourist destinations Transylvania, to an over decade-long film-induced destination Ubud in Bali, to a sprouting film-induced destination George Town in Penang. Such a stratification of three comparable destinations leads to both the vertical and horizontal evaluation of the effectiveness of film-induced tourism strategies. Hence, a methodology of multiple-case study with mixed-methods characterised by a set of differing qualitative research approaches will be adopted to the three distinctive destinations, respectively. Emerging markets require new techniques and strategies of marketing, especially in the unsettled post-COVID-19 era. Findings may be useful to destination managers in planning an effective destination image strategy in order to achieve the most sustainable positive impacts and aligning the films’ image of the destination with the desired image and the potential audience reach.

Purpose – The study examined whether increasing tourism competitiveness in destination like Bali translates into increasing social welfare for the host communities. The paper uses a framework introduced by Kim and Wicks (2010) to investigate how destination competitiveness has affected residents’ livelihoods and quality of life in Bali. Design/Methodology/Approach- Fieldwork took place over four weeks in Bali using a rapid rural appraisal approach with qualitative data collection techniques. A total number of 28 in-depth, semi-structured interviews were carried out during June with an average duration of 1.5 hours. Besides doing interviews, direct observations and notes were taken to ensure self-reflection in qualitative fieldwork, and then interview data were analysed using Nvivo software. Respondents were selected using convenience sampling and contacts with key stakeholders in the tourism industry including government officials who were made using snowballing technique. Findings – Key themes that emerged through the interviews suggest that socio-economic prosperity is not guaranteed although a destination appears successful. The findings show that the economic prosperity that is normally perceived from a successful competitive destination like Bali does not always translate to increased social welfare. The tourism competitiveness framework leading to better socio-economic prosperity is partially demonstrated. Our research found that Bali’s success has brought an improvement in quality of life for the Balinese but only to a limited extent. Originality of the research – Our paper is the first attempt to investigate the link between destination competitiveness and host community quality of life as seen on the Kim and Wicks model.