A Tribute to Jafari Jafari, Palma de Mallorca, October 23-25, 2013
Christine Lundberg, PhD
ETOUR (European Tourism Research Institute)
Mid-Sweden University, Sweden
E-mail: christine.lundberg@miun.se
Szilvia Gyimóthy, PhD, Assoc. Prof.
Tourism Research Unit
Department of Culture and Global Studies
Aalborg University /Campus Copenhagen, Denmark
E-mail: gyimothy@cgs.aau.dk
Mia Larson, PhD, Assoc. Prof.
Department of Service Management and Service Studies
Campus Helsingborg at Lund University, Sweden
E-mail: mia.larson@ism.lu.se
Maria Lexhagen, PhD
ETOUR (European Tourism Research Institute)
Mid-Sweden University, Sweden
E-mail: maria.lexhagen@miun.se
Kristina N. Lindström, PhD
Department of Economy and Society, Human Geography Unit/Centre for Tourism
School of Business, Economics and Law at University of Gothenburg, Sweden
E-mail: kristina.lindstrom@handels.gu.se
Pop Culture Tourism: Research Propositions
Tourism in the wake of films, literature, TV-series and music is increasingly gaining interest in
academia and among practitioners. Lord of the Rings tourism in New Zeeland, tourists visiting the
ABBA museum in Stockholm, Dracula tourism in Romania, and Twilight Saga vacations in USA and
Italy are examples that have pinpointed the growing potential of this form of touristic activity. This
popular cultural phenomenon a representation of social change or cultural construction “for the people
and by the people”, as Lindgren (2005) aptly noted. Such changes become evident in the sudden
emergence and fading of popular cultural tourism trends, induced by films, literature, music, radio,
fashion, or games. Popcultural phenomena tend to suddenly ‘pop up’ on consumers’ radars,
contributing to the emergence of a substantial fan community, which may eventually trigger extensive
travelling. Crossmediality and topicality is believed to be central conditions of longer-term pop culture
tourism. For instance, many of the notable and successful film, TV-series, literature tourism examples
are based on book series adapted to the big screen or television (e.g. Lord of the Rings, The Twilight
Saga, Harry Potter, Dracula, Pride and Prejudice).
Accordingly, tourism and media as intertwined phenomena represent converging cultures in a
contemporary globalized world. The co-presence of local economies and global popular cultural
phenomena brings about new ties and increased connectivity between destinations, tourism, media
industries, and fan cultures. More specifically, popular culture has a complex, de/stabilizing impact on
destination development and competitiveness, as it opens up for new kinds of rationales for visiting
localities featured in films, literature or other media. However, the interdependencies of destinations,
fan communities or tribes and the global tourism and media industries are asymmetric and pathdependent. Distant localities featured in popular culture may embark on fundamentally different
development trajectories from those of unfeatured regions with similar resources.
A Tribute to Jafari Jafari, Palma de Mallorca, October 23-25, 2013
Despite the significance of converging processes in tourism and media production and pop cultural
consumption, theorizing in this field is weak. Confined case studies of film or literature tourism has so
far been unable to fully explain the rise and fall of tourist destinations. This paper responds to previous
research’s call for synthesizing film tourism research by employing a broader social science approach
to explore the complex relationships between tourism and popular culture consumption/ production as
well as destination development. Based on a comprehensive review of interconnected themes featured
in tourism/experience/cultural economy literature, this paper problematizes the growing supply and
demand of film tourism, literary tourism and other popular cultural phenomena evoking leisure
mobility. By revisiting related research themes (such as post-modern consumption, hyper reality and
fiction, fans and fandom, media convergence, technology mediation, and positionality), the authors
present a number of propositions related to popular culture induced tourism related to six topics: (1)
Pop culture tourism and its topicality, (2) Pop culture tourism and its driving forces – Fans and
fandom, (3) Pop culture tourism and post-modernity, (4) Pop culture tourism and media convergence,
(5) Pop culture tourism and technology mediation, and (6) Pop culture tourism and the experience and
cultural economies. Moreover, the paper argues that research in this field would advance further by
employing inter-disciplinary perspectives and mixed methods.
Key words: popular culture, media and pop culture-induced tourism, fan tourism, destination
development