On-screen tourism and destination development: a sociocognitive approach

This study develops a new conceptual framework, called the "sociocultural market wheel" of tourism destinations, to establish on-screen tourism as an integrated part of destination development, rather than a peripheral voice or an ad-hoc niche element. To do so, this study applies the sociocognitive product market theory, which has been well established in the field of management in the recent years. This study argues that on-screen place-making representations impact tourism destination development through a continuous, mutual and two-way sensemaking and sensegiving process between film industry storytellers and internal and external destination shared conceptual systems, which is grounded around the exchange of multi-level stories, what has been also described as "serial narratives" that contain destination-related myths. The main aims of the study are, first, to build on recent literature on on-screen tourism that is taking a popular culture, rather than a destination or tourist, perspective and, second, to inform destination practitioners and DMOs that they need to monitor, interpret and analyse the stories and serial narratives that the film industry produces about the destination, to be able to proactively drive sustainable destination development and avoid the risks of touristification.