Who does Game of Thrones tourism, and why?

Abby Waysdorf is a PhD candidate studying film and television-inspired tourism.

Fort Lovrijenac looks the part, a stone fortress looming over the sparkling blue water of the sea framing Dubrovnik. It has thick stone walls, small windows, the city motto carved over the entrance. Within, it’s easy to recognize the spot where Cersei confronted Littlefinger, even without the draped fabric and potted plants. Standing there, on top of the aged white stones, everything seems strangely close.

Of course, in other ways, Lovrijenac doesn’t feel right at all–it’s small and empty, and much more stark and squat than the section of the Red Keep it’s supposed to portray. Gone are the tall tower, the decorations, and of course, the rest of the royal castle itself–Fort Lovrijenac, while solid, is a small fort, designed to hold mercenaries and their equipment rather than a king and his court. Still, though, it feels real.

It’s experiencing that sense of “realness” that brings people to visit filming locations….

I’ve been researching film location tourism, and specifically Game of Thrones tourism, for the past year as part of my PhD research, including by interviewing dozens of fans. What I’ve seen is that the screen can only give us so much: we see the place, but we don’t feel the ground or smell the air or any of the other little things that make up a full experience. It’s only partial, as attached as we get to the places we see on screen and what happens there.

What this “realness” entails, though, varies a lot from person to person. Everyone I’ve interviewed for my research wants to see what they saw on TV, and make sure that it’s the correct tree or doorway they’re standing by. But the other things they want out of the location visit changes depending on what it is they like in Game of Thrones to begin with.

Fort Lovrijenac, for example, is an exciting visit for the Game of Thrones tourist not just because parts of it are easily recognizable, but because it also has a sense of history. Clearly medieval, there’s a heft and solidity to it that immediately marks it as something more than a “typical set” of wood and painted cloth. If you’re the kind of Game of Thrones fan who likes how much it feels like actual medieval history, seeing that reflected in the medieval structures that the show films is appealing.

The built sets are off-limits, so much of what the visitor gets is historic structures – castles and ruined abbeys, towers and city walls. Many of the people I interviewed loved the historical aspect of the show. Being in a historical space, learning about the “real story” behind what Game of Thrones used, enhanced this feeling that the show was reflecting the past. There’s an insider appeal to this kind of knowledge, knowing what “really happened” where the show took place, which allow for a connection with history. Game of Thrones provides a frame for understanding what went on here centuries ago, a way to bring the past of these locations into focus and make it vibrant and real.

There’s also the “realness” of what happened there much more recently, the difference between what we see on screen and what we see when we visit. Discovering what the production staff did, be they the scouts and set designers or the editors and CGI programmers, is intriguing. Stories about what really went on during filming, imagining what it must have taken to find the location and how they transported the equipment, feeling the heat or cold and realizing what the actors may have been through, all of it shades in Game of Thrones. Some are lucky enough to catch glimpses of filming, or they’re there in enough time that there are still relics of it about, adding to the sense that they were really where things happened and can figure out how it happened.

And then there’s imaginative play in general–imagining what King’s Landing or Winterfell could be like, reenacting scenes and saying lines. It’s fun to play with some of the boundaries between reality and fantasy. Not that anyone really believed that they were ‘in Westeros’, of course, but they enjoyed playing with the idea that they could be, by moving and feeling and sensing the environment. Being in those spaces fills in the fan’s sense of what Westeros and Essos are, what they might look like beyond the bits seen on TV and what the weather might be like if you went there.

Whatever “real” means, being there is a unique and personal experience. People find it hard to put into words, because it’s not really something that can be expressed that way. It’s all about feeling the place, about making a personal connection to Game of Thrones. Yes, it can be shared on Facebook and talked about to your friends, but that’s not the same as being there. That belongs to the person who went, and them alone.

And who are the Game of Thrones tourists? That was one of the more fascinating aspects of my research. I talked to teenage boys and 60-something women, committed fantasy geeks and Harvard Business School students on yacht week. It was a portrait of the kind of audience Game of Thrones captures. It can be assumed that the show attracts a variety of viewers based on the ratings, but seeing them all brings the point home. This is something that has resonated with a lot of people, and many who would have never thought about fantasy before. Yet here they were.

For many (although certainly not all) of these fans, visiting the locations was also the only sort of fan activity they did. While the Internet makes it easier and easier for fans to read about and discuss their object of fandom with others, and the idea of doing so is fairly commonplace, it’s worth remembering that not everyone wants to do this. The fans I talked to who didn’t had various reasons. Some, while they enjoy the show, still think that spending time discussing it online is a geek line they don’t want to cross. Others feel that the fandom won’t be welcoming to them–that participation is reserved for those who are experts, or at least with the very strong opinion that they are, and they’ll be rejected. A few were afraid of spoilers (although as an aside, I’ve found the Game of Thrones community is very good about hiding them). Others just said they didn’t have time.

Visiting filming locations bypasses all of this. You’re already on vacation, so you don’t need to take time out of a busy work schedule to post or think about posting. They can also fit into other vacation plans, whether it’s a cruise stopping in Dubrovnik for a day or a family heritage trip to Northern Ireland. It’s also something that can be scaled to different levels of fandom. When I was doing my fieldwork last year, most of the sites were found by a quick Google search, or by paying for the new tours that were running, and since then it’s only become easier to find and get to the locations.

Castle Ward, site of Winterfell, is advertising “Game of Thrones experiences,” the Dubrovnik tourist board offers a Game of Thrones map on its website, and more tours are available at both locations. Once there, there are no gatekeepers judging knowledge of the show, and the locations are the same whether you’ve just finished binge-watching season 1 or have been in since the pilot. And if you are a more adventurous fan, there are always more obscure locations to find.

And there’s an allure to location visiting. Big spreads have run in The New York Times, The Guardian, and a range of other newspapers, talking about how great it is to go. Government ministers have shown up. It’s not coded as something overly “geeky”–just lightly so, just enough to be fun, essentially sightseeing with a twist. And the appeal of “being there” is strong throughout popular culture, despite/because of the ability to virtually “be” anywhere. It’s “better” to be at a concert rather than watching it on DVD, for example, and this extends to the idea of being at the filming location. There’s something that’s just cool about actually being there. And in doing so, it becomes real, becomes your own. That’s something that transcends fan type.

Abby Waysdorf is a Simpsons fan transplanted to the Low Countries. She’s also a PhD candidate at Erasmus University Rotterdam, where her study focuses on film and television-inspired tourism. You can learn more about her research at locatingimagination.com, or follow her on Twitter at @awfully_good.

• Published on 11/10/2014 at 7:30 AM CDT
• Last updated on 11/10/2014 at 7:30 AM CDT