Touring the Middle-earth, the tourist experience : analysis of the TripAdvisor reviews of the Lord of the Rings tour participants

Since the release of the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy (2001, 2002, 2003) New Zealand has been visited by millions of people wanting to experience the mythical Middle-earth they saw on the silver screen. The Kiwi director Peter Jackson's interpretation of the epic story of adventure, sacrifice and friendship in the fantasy land created by the English author J.R.R. Tolkien has widely be seen as an 'authentic' and New Zealand as a fair representation of the Middle-earth with its lush valleys, barren wastelands and remote mystical mountains. Film tourism contains any tourist activity that is induced by the viewing of the moving image. It is a relatively new field of study and even though the Lord of the Rings is the most studied topic within the film tourism literature, the on-site tourism experience process is still not fully understood. The research concentrates on the experiences of three different types of Lord of the Rings tours; Hobbiton Movie Set is the only built set left in New Zealand, Nomad Safaris besides the movies also concentrates to the other activities and the rugged landscape around the Queenstown area, whereas Adventure Safari Movie Tours tries to compensate the fact all of its locations are in public parks by re-enactments and movie clips. The main focus of the study is to find out how the tour participants experience their tours; what elements are in present in a film tourism experience, and what qualities make the locations and experiences authentic? As the main source of material is used reviews written on the TripAdvisor website. Triangulation is the most appropriate method to analyse user-generated data as it gives an opportunity to combine qualitative and quantitative methods. Content analysis can be used to analyse the reviews, but because of the subjectivity of experiences it is also relevant to compare the results of the study to the researcher's own experiences and observations from the chosen Lord of the Rings tours. Film tourist experience is a complex research matter as it is highly subjective sum of many parts. The experience starts already in the planning phase when the expectations are formed, and the anticipation builds up during the travel to the attraction. The experience at the attraction itself holds in both the physical and social aspects, and authentic locations and interactions are the key to the satisfying film tourist experience. With the help of the guides' interpretative skills the narratives turn into myths and reality merges with hyperreal fantasy. Memorabilia, such as rocks, t-shirts and pictures gained from the attraction help in the post-trip recollection phase and work as a status symbols. The results indicated that the sample reflected the typical Lord of the Rings tour participant as identified in previous research, with reviewers being mainly part of the working-age population (25-49 year olds), predominantly female, and from the Western and English-speaking markets, majority being from Australia and USA. The biggest negative factor in the film tourist experience is the bad value for the money. Whereas a good tour guide is the most important part in the value creation. Passionate tour guides are even able to turn weaker locations into experiences worth paying. The scenery seems to be the balancing factor, as a bad tour guide combined to the beautiful location seems to lead to an average experience. Hobbiton is seen as the most authentic and iconic of the three studied locations because of its lifelike details and the surrounding pastoral landscape. The set is the actual piece where the outdoor scenes of the Hobbiton where filmed. The Nomad Safaris participants on the other hand immerse into the beauty of the natural landscape and are not even missing any set structures.