FILM AS A TOOL FOR TOURISM PROMOTION: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SELECTED NOLLYWOOD AND ALBERT BROCCOLLI’S JAMES BOND FILMS

ABSTRACT

In 1990, scholars estimated that film has about 70 million global viewership. By 2015, the number of viewers had increased to 350 million due to population growth and technological advancement in film viewing devices. Research has established that film has the capacity to induce tourism. Albert Broccolli’s James Bond films have been consistent in their projection of global tourism to the extent that several countries usually lobby to be included in upcoming episodes of the films. Tourism has helped in boosting the economies of several countries: Kenya, the Caribbean, New Zealand and Australia. Nigeria with all her tourists’ destinations is yet to attract tourists on a large scale. This is mainly because such tourists’ destinations have not been well projected to the world. With the continuous fall in the price of crude oil and the complaints from various state governments about poor internally generated revenues, a major way out is to diversify the economy and tourism is one of the sectors that will help in this regard. The Nigerian film industry, Nollywood, which is the third largest in the world, is an available platform to use to project the country’s tourists’ destinations. This study investigated how tourism themes were projected in James Bond films in order to use them as a template to put Nollywood films on track, tourism wise.

This research used in-depth interview and content analysis. The research used simple random sampling to select the Nollywood and James Bond films; and purposive sampling to select the Nollywood producers. A sample size consisted of 10 Nollywood films produced between 2000 and 2015 and 10 James Bond films from the first episode to 2015 as well as three Nollywood producers, bringing the total sample size to 20 films and three producers. Six themes of place, personality, performance, authenticity, adventure and culture were selected as the major tourism themes for the study. A code book was developed to enhance inter-coder reliability. Since it is of an interpretative and constructionist dimension, external validity was anchored around transferability and open bracketing. The description of the themes of this research was developed slowly over the open and axial coding process thereby creating a detailed account of the structure of tourism within the sampled films.

Findings revealed that Nollywood films failed to inject tourism themes. Themes used in Nollywood were mostly centred on daily occurrences. The issue of lack of partnership was also identified as an impediment to synergy among stakeholders. Filmmakers interviewed were of the opinion that there was lack of trust among the stakeholders.

The study concluded that tourism was under-represented in Nollywood films. The research recommended that filmmakers should deliberately use tourism themes. Banks should encourage filmmakers through friendly loan policies. Government should reconsider establishing film villages in Nigeria.

Keywords:     Performance, Place, Authenticity,Culture, Adventure,Personality

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1       Background to the Study

Over the years since its introduction as a medium of mass communication, film has been adopted as a medium to send developmental messages to the people. Davis (2006) was of the opinion that films about black people, especially feature films contributed in creating awareness among black people in America on the history and culture of Africans. This is a pointer to the fact that film canplay an important part in creating awareness. Rogers (2006) in a bid to project the importance of film as an instructional tool encouraged the use of documentary films to serve as teaching aid for teaching black Latin-American culture. This position is not however restricted to Latin America alone; it is applicable to all parts of the world. With emphasis on the role of film in development, especially in developing countries, Hopkins (1971) explained that “developing countries, anxious to accelerate the processes of economic and social change will offer their people a better life, have turned increasingly to film as a means of supplementing or replacing traditional communication forms.” (p.5). Sauer (1992) further added that “Film could be a strong tool for development. It can be used to contribute to a feeling of nationhood, as a voice for national planning, to help teach necessary skills, to extend the effective market, to help people look to the future, and to prepare people to play a role in nation building.” (p.25).

In Nigeria, film has been used since the colonial era to enlighten people about government programmes and also by missionaries to serve as a means to pass evangelical messages. Alawode and Sunday (2013) agree with this position by saying:

The films shown by the colonial masters and the missionaries were the means of propagating their government and religion. During the Second World War, films were used widely by the British government for propaganda effort to make people in the colonies to understand why they should fight in the wars. Mobile cinemas were used all over Nigeria to communicate the news of the successes of allies and defeat of the Germans.