Should Destination Marketers Avoid Dark Movies in the Marketing Plans?

In the destination marketing literature, the exploration of movie-induced tourism has generated great interest in recent years. The basic purpose for movie-induced tourism studies is to explore the image enhancement opportunities that exist through the medium of movies and television programs. While many destination marketers take a positive view on movies’ potential impact on place images, some professionals have asked the question as to whether dark movies will have any adverse influence on destination images. For example, according to

The Detroit News

(2010), when the crime drama

Detroit 187

was shot in Detroit, the city expressed its concern of the show’s potential damage to its reputation. Some of the City Council members believed that the show portrayed Detroit as the crime capitol and proposed to oppose the show’s production on the site. The major questions now for destination marketers are: Will the viewers of dark movies tend to generate more favorable destination images or more unfavorable destination images? Will the viewers of dark movies tend to be more interested or less interested in visiting the embedded tourism site? The objective of this study is to explore these interesting questions which have not been addressed in the literature.