Visitors are Coming: Fan Tourism in Northern Ireland

Screen tourism, also referred to as media tourism or fan tourism, happens when visitors travel to a location because it appeared in, or was used in the production of, a film or television series. Although it’s been popularised by films like Lord of The Rings, screen tourism has been around for years. Peter Bolan and Mihaela Ghisoiu argue that it was the post-war decades of the 1940s and 50s that saw some of the earliest significant examples of film influencing a desire to travel, citing Carol Reed’s 1949 film The Third Man as a driver for tourism to Vienna, and of course The Sound of Music saw an almost 20% increase in American tourists to Salzburg after the film’s release in 1965.[1] Screen tourism has become a well-established area of academic research given the role that films and television shows play in driving visitors to specific locations, and this research project builds on that. Where scholarship has mainly focused on the way screen tourism is experienced by visitors[2], or the impact of screen tourism on local communities[3], industry and media reports have highlighted the role media tourism plays in economic and regional development. The Guardian reported that Birmingham’s visitor numbers increased by 26% between 2013 and 2018 as a result of the city being used in the filming of Peaky Blinders, while research by Visit Cornwall found Poldark and Doc Martin were responsible for an increased number visits to the county. Revenue from tourists visiting Highclere Castle after watching Downton Abbey helped fund repairs to the stately building while moving I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here to north Wales during the pandemic led to an increasing number of tourists visiting the town. Screen tourism can clearly have a long-term impact on the regions where filming takes place, just as it can have a long-term impact on the fans who visit. In this blog post, I want to focus on the economic impact Game of Thrones had on Northern Ireland.

Immersive Experiences

I travelled to Belfast to do some fieldwork on Game of Thrones fan tourism, which involved going on three tours (run by Game of Thrones Tours) and visiting the Game of Thrones Studio Tour. Established by Rob Dowling in 2014, Game of Thrones Tours offers tours around the Northern Ireland locations used in the series, run by guides who worked as extras on the show. Game of Thrones Tours bills itself as one of the largest Game of Thrones tours in the world, the company ran 30 buses a week at the height of the show’s popularity, though the COVID-19 pandemic had an impact and in the summer of 2022 the company only ran seven a week. When I travelled to Belfast in a cold March 2023, however, both bus tours I went on were well-attended with fans from the US and Portugal, as well as the UK.

The first tour I went on was the Winterfell trek, which is very Stark-oriented. There were around 32 of us there, plus Lar the tour guide, who was an extra in Game of Thrones, and Richard – another tour guide and extra who joined us for part of the day. Game of Thrones Tours provides costumes for attendees to wear so we all donned Stark cloaks, which were surprisingly warm and very welcome in the biting March wind. We of course had a group photo taken. In the first of what would be a continuing call-and-response, Lar shouted ‘who owns the north?’, the superfans in the group responded ‘we own the north!’ This became a common refrain throughout our photo opportunities, generating some strange looks from the non-Game of Thrones fans visiting the locations at the same time. Tollymore Forest itself featured as the wood north of the Wall where the Night’s Watch find the dismembered wildling bodies in the very first episode. We got to see the grove where this was filmed and heard some behind the scenes stories before making our way to the location used as the Wolfswood where the Starks find the direwolf puppies. Lar showed us clips from the episodes while we were standing at the locations, allowing us to see both real and fictional places at the same time. Tollymore is open to everyone, so we had some strange looks, striding through the forest dressed very literally as something out of a fantasy series, but it was fun and adds to the sense of immersion. Pine and Gilmore[4] argue that memorable experiences arise from immersion and the ‘reduction of the space’[5] between fan tourist and the text through cosplay in the filming location certainly created a memorable experience.

Game of Thrones Tours at Tollymore Forest

From Tollymore we went to Castle Ward and walked to Audley’s Castle, a 15th century tower that functioned as both one of Walder Frey’s Twins and the location of Robb’s Camp in the Riverlands. Other scenes filmed nearby include the spot where Brienne of Tarth killed three Stark bannermen while trying to escape with Jaime Lannister, and where Tyrion and Bronn were ambushed by the Stone Crows of the Vale. I took the opportunity to take some photos featuring my Brienne of Tarth Funko!Pop figure, merging material fandom with cosplay. Rebecca Williams has written about the use of para-textual objects such as merchandise in the fan-tourist experience, arguing that carrying these items around locations and inserting them not photographs “allowed fan identities to be performed and displayed and for the links between the narrative world and the ‘real’ locations to be mediated”.[6] As part of the research project I shared photographs from my fieldwork on Instagram, accompanied with hashtags relevant to the text and the academic framing of the visit. As a result, not only were links between the narrative and real locations mediated, but so was the academic study of screen tourism.

After Strangford Lough we walked back to Castle Ward, the original location of Winterfell in season one of Game of Thrones. Numerous green screens were set up throughout Castle Ward’s courtyard to allow for visual effects to be included in post-production. Other elements of the courtyard were physically adapted, such as thatching the roof of the toilets and disguising the building’s real purpose. Castle Ward and its grounds is owned by the National Trust and – unlike Tollymore – featured information boards stating Game of Thrones was filmed there. Similar boards were at the tower at Strangford Lough, this time put up by Newry, Mourne and Down District Council, suggesting that a range of organisations are aware of the opportunities filming locations can offer for tourism. Additional activities are on offer at Castle Ward, such as archery lessons that take place at the same spot the Stark children were practising during the show. A Winterfell Festival featuring jousting, falconry displays, displays of props, re-enactments and an immersive skirmish to Audley’s Castle was also held at Castle Ward in 2016, 2017 and 2018 and saw around 3,000 fans attend.

The final stop of the day was Inch Abbey, a crumbling 12th century ruin where Robb Stark became King in the North. The fans on the tour bus had taken part in a competition on their drive up, with whoever answering the most questions correctly getting the chance to choose the sword they wanted to use for the photo opp. As well as the cloaks, Game of Thrones Tours bring along replicas of the most famous swords (Kingslayer, Needle) as well as ordinary swords, shields and banners to use at the Abbey. It was fun to be wielding my, rather hefty, sword in the place where Robb was proclaimed King in the North and pretend that I too was a Stark bannerman. Rather appropriately, the wind and snow had picked up at this point, making it feel as though we really were in a Game of Thrones episode, so we took some quick photos in front of the Abbey before heading off.

Skills development and economic impacts

In addition to the Games of Thrones Tours offerings, other experiences were also developed: the Mulhall family, father William and his sons Ross, Caelan, and William Jr, who owned the Northern Inuit dogs used as direwolves in the show set up Direwolf Tours; Flip Robinson, who was a body double for Hodor and The Mountain, created Giant Tours; Peak Discovery Group expanded into Game of Thrones tourism with Winterfell Tours, offering immersive experiences including archery at Winterfell, a film locations cycle trail, a boat tour and Game of Thrones glamping. Offering a Game of Thrones experience meant that Peak Discovery Group could increase its business by nearly 40% between 2014 and 2019 and grow its team from 5 to 16. While figures show that 1 in 6 travel to Northern Ireland because of Game of Thrones, it’s not just the tourism industry that has benefited from the show. The second Game of Thrones Tour I went on was the Glass of Thrones tour, taking in six stained glass windows depicting key themes from Game of Thrones that had been placed around Belfast. The first window was unveiled the morning of the season 8 premiere, with subsequent windows being revealed as each episode aired. Designed to celebrate a decade of Game of Thrones filming in Northern Ireland and intended to “bring the destination to the attention of Game of Thrones fans around the world”, the windows were created by Tourism Ireland and Tourism NI in partnership with HBO and were stained by an artist in Bangor, County Down. Originally leading fans from Belfast City Hall to Titanic Studios, Tourism Ireland gifted them to the city of Belfast and they’re now on permanent display along the Maritime Mile. As with other Game of Thrones tours, my guide was a former extra and as I was the only person on the tour I got a load of behind-the-scenes information.

Brienne of Tarth Funko in front of the Brienne of Tarth glass window

What particularly interested me was the way the show involved a range of people and industries, both during the time it filmed in the country and afterwards. Andrew, my guide, told me how students who appeared as extras or were studying film and television production at college had picked up work experience on the show, and progressed from trainees or extras to experienced crew who could add working on a critically-acclaimed incredible show to their CV and have the pick of any job. As Carla Stronge, casting director, says “People who were extras are now heads of department in their own right: costume supervisors, armoury department co-ordinators and so on“. Since the series began filming, it’s created around 900 full-time and 5,700 part-time jobs in Northern Ireland, “funding and developing a brand new, multi-award winning skilled workforce – from carpenters and armourers to hair stylists and makeup artists”.

Northern Ireland’s film and television industry is growing, and recent productions include Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Dalgliesh and Old Guy. HBO also continues to invest in the country. The Game of ThronesStudio Tour, which I also visited, opened in the show’s original filming location at Linen Mill Studios in Banbridge in February 2022. The Studio Tour, operated in conjunction with Warner Bros. Themed Entertainment, which also runs the Harry Potter Studio Tour, features original sets and props as well as interactive experiences and behind the scenes information on the production and filming of the show.

Around 180 staff are employed at the site, which also works with local businesses to bring in goods and services, and offers training opportunities in the creative industries, construction and tourism sectors to local schools and colleges.

Conclusion

Game of Thrones and its associated screen tourism has had a huge impact on Northern Ireland. Not only has it brought money into the local economy and generated new jobs, but it has also helped change perceptions of the country. Northern Ireland has, historically, been associated with the Troubles – armed conflict between Catholic Irish Republicans and Protestant Loyalists between the 1960s and the late 1990s that cost over 3,600 lives. The Troubles have been intrinsically linked with Northern Ireland’s heritage and a tourism industry has been built up based around the conflict, with murals and sites commemorating the Troubles appearing on various bus tours around Belfast. Mention was made of this period of Ireland’s history on both Games of Thrones Tour tours, but these were usually followed by a comment on how people from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland were coming together thanks, in large part, to Game of Thrones. Aligning Northern Ireland so closely with Westeros, as well as a sustained marketing campaign by Northern Ireland Screen and Tourism Ireland, means that the negative perceptions of the country and the Troubles have been superseded by the show and tourism is as much influenced by popular culture as it is history.[7]

The final season of Game of Thrones aired in 2019. While a prequel series was ordered by HBO, filming has mainly taken place in Spain, Cornwall and Derbyshire. Still, Game of Thrones remains a draw for visitors. On the tours I went on there were fans from Ireland, the UK, Spain and the US and while numbers have decreased from the height of the show’s popularly, caused in part by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, it would be no surprise if the series does for Northern Ireland what Lord of The Rings did for New Zealand and ensures a steady stream of fan tourists for years to come.

This research was funded by the University of York.

[1] Bolan, P. and Ghisoiu, M. (2019). Film Tourism through the Ages: From Lumière to Virtual Reality. In I. Yeoman & U. McMahon-Beattie (eds.) The Future Past of Tourism: Historical Perspectives and Future Evolutions, pp. 236-252. Bristol: Channel View Publications.

[2] See, for example, Waysdorf, A. S. (2021). Fan sites: Film tourism and contemporary fandom. Iowa: University of Iowa Press; Reijnders, S. (2011). Stalking the count: Dracula, fandom and tourism."Annals of Tourism Research 38(1): 231-248; Kim, S. (2012). Audience involvement and film tourism experiences: Emotional places, emotional experiences. Tourism Management 33(2): 387–396.

[3] See, for example, O’Connor, N. & Kim, S. (2014). Pictures and prose: Exploring the impact of literary and film tourism. Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 12(1): 1–17; Beeton, S. (2001). Lights, camera, re-action: How does film-induced tourism affect a country town? In: M.F. Rogers & Y.M.J. Collins (eds.), The future of Australia’s country towns, pp. 172–183. Bendigo: La Trobe University; Torchin, L. (2002). Location, location, location: The destination of the Manhattan TV Tour. Tourist Studies 2(3): 247–266.

[4] Pine, B. J. & Gilmore, J. H. (1999). The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

[5] St-James, Y., Darveau, J. & Fortin, J. (2018). Immersion in film tourist experiences. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 35(3): 273-284.

[6] Williams, R. (2019). Funko Hannibal in Florence: Fan tourism, participatory culture, and paratextual play. JOMEC Journal, 14: 72.

[7] See Doppelhofer, C. (2023). Overcoming the Troubles in Westeros: changing perceptions of post-conflict Northern Ireland through the diegetic heritage of Game of Thrones. Social & Cultural Geography: 1-21.

Biography

Bethan Jones is a Research Fellow at the University of South Wales. She has written extensively about anti-fandom, media tourism and participatory cultures, and is co-editor of Crowdfunding the Future: Media Industries, Ethics, and Digital Society (Peter Lang) and the forthcoming Participatory Culture Wars: Controversy, Conflict, and Complicity in Fandom (under contract with University of Iowa Press). Bethan is on the board of the Fan Studies Network, co-chair of the SCMS Fan and Audience Studies Scholarly Interest Group co-editor of Popular Communication.