Toddlers, tourism and Tobermory: Destination marketing issues and television-induced tourism

Abstract

It has been witnessed on an international scale that destination-specific film and television has the power to increase tourism demand. For destination marketers, the projected image and the profile of visitors attracted form significant areas of concern. Nowhere has this been more marked than on the Isle of Mull, Scotland, where in 2003, a new phenomenon termed ‘toddler tourism’ was sparked by the popularity of a new pre-school children's television programme called Balamory, which is filmed on the Island. This paper reports on a survey of tourism business operators on Mull and provides evidence of the nature and scope of the impact of television-induced tourism on tourism business performance and activity, indicating that the effects were concentrated spatially and temporally. Marketing implications are explored using business operators perceptions of the effects of marketing on tourism patterns and broad areas of concern for the future development of tourism as a result of television programmes are highlighted.