The Stuart family planted The Dark Hedges, a beech tree avenue in County Antrim, to border the entrance to their Georgian mansion in the eighteenth century. The trees have grown together overhead, their pale branches entwining in a way that looks good in practically any light, making the road very evocative. For the majority of its existence, it was only known to locals and the occasional heritage traveler who happened upon it. It changed completely when Game of Thrones used it as the King’s Road. It was one of Northern Ireland’s most photographed spots by the middle of the 2010s, attracting tourists who had never heard of it prior to the show and who drove down small rural roads just to stand where Arya Stark had previously strolled in disguise.
That is the most concentrated form of film tourism. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide were drawn to a particular stretch of asphalt in County Antrim due to a production choice made by a site scout who saw a road that appeared to belong in Westeros. More than five years after the conclusion of Game of Thrones, a sizable fan base continues to visit the areas along the Causeway Coast and into the Glens of Antrim.
Visitors who have organized their vacation around Ballintoy Harbour, a small operating harbour on the north Antrim coast utilized as the Iron Islands, are welcomed. Located in a peaceful seaside resort, Cushenden Caves attracts visitors who wish to stand in the precise location where a certain scene was shot. Screen tourism differs from general landscape tourism in part because of the pilgrimage’s particularity.
The Game of Thrones example is not the only reason why the Causeway Coast is appealing to film and television projects. With its magnificent ruin and ocean backdrop, Dunluce Castle, built on a basalt outcrop above the sea, gave Disney’s Artemis Fowl production a setting that didn’t require any computer treatment to read as somewhere odd and ancient.
Dracula Untold employed The Giant’s Causeway, a UNESCO World Heritage Site made up of 40,000 interlocking hexagonal basalt columns that appear both geological and otherworldly at the same time. The film needed a location that could realistically function as a fabled landscape from a different century. This is consistently and diversely available along the shore. In contrast to a more homogeneous terrain, Northern Ireland is reusable as a filmmaking location since different parts of the shoreline may convincingly serve distinct fictitious universes.
Nearby Belfast’s Titanic Studios has developed into a significant production center, and its existence enhances the area’s ability to host major projects. Subsequent productions are more feasible and effective than they would be in a region developing from begin thanks to the infrastructure that develops around a working studio, including skilled local crew, prop and set suppliers, catering, and logistics firms that comprehend the wants of site work. This infrastructure was combined with the scenery of the Causeway Coast in Netflix’s The School for Good and Evil to create a fantasy visual world that the production team clearly believed couldn’t be replicated anywhere as successfully or affordably.
More sophisticated infrastructure has been developed around this film tourism base by Tourism Northern Ireland and the Causeway Coast & Glens Borough Council than by many other places. A fan arriving at Belfast airport can find the precise rock, harbour wall, or woodland walk where a specific scene was filmed without having to conduct their own independent research thanks to dedicated site guides, interactive maps, and marked touring routes.
The user experience is important. Motivated tourists who have done extensive research before traveling are frequently the driving force behind film tourism; nevertheless, the more convenient the official infrastructure makes the journey, the more casual interest turns into actual travel.
