FILM INDUSTRY AS A PROMOTER OF THE TOURIST DESTINATION FOR THE YOUNGER POPULATION

Film tourism is becoming more and more popular in the global tourism market and competition among host destinations is growing so great efforts are made to attract film sets. Film locations play a significant role in planning marketing activities for tourist destinations. This paper aims to explore the relationship between watching movies and consumers' behavior when choosing a tourist destination. Hypotheses have been proposed suggesting that watching movies is related to consumers' decisions when choosing a tourist destination and that a movie story is a pivotal factor when choosing a tourist destination. In order to test the proposed hypotheses, quantitative research was conducted. The respondents were asked to answer the questions related to their moviewatching habits, their travel habits and preferences, desires and needs when choosing a tourist destination that was seen in the movie, trips already made for the purpose of visiting movie events and destinations, and their desires and intentions when choosing the next tourist destination. The data were analysed using descriptive and inductive statistics, the hypotheses were tested and conclusions about the association between the examined variables were made using the Chi-square test. The results confirmed a significant association between the respondents' prevalence of watching movies and their intentions when choosing a tourist destination, but the main incentives to visit the destination are the beauty of the landscape, specific film location and cultural and historical sites. Research was carried out on a convenience sample, thus, the interpretation and generalization of the results should be treated with some caution. Given the significant increase of film tourism in Croatia over the past years, the authors recognize the results might be useful as implications for planning of marketing activities and possibilities for branding Croatia as a film destination.