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Movie fans are flocking to locations ill-equipped to handle them.
Film and TV locations have drawn people from around the world for years. From the misty mountains of New Zealand’s ‘Middle Earth’ to Croatia’s mediaeval Old Towns featured in Game of Thrones.
But the global pilgrimage of fans has started to feel less like harmless fun and more like a relentless invasion of spaces that were never designed to handle the weight of mass tourism.
Chalcot Crescent in London’s Primrose Hill is the latest famous location to spark a frosty debate between locals and tourists.
The street is known for its pastel coloured houses, and featured as the home of the Brown family in the new ‘Paddington’ films. Visitors have flocked to the Regency terraces since 2014, but a recent offering by Airbnb has had residents up in arms.
The travel app has announced plans to renovate a house on Chalcot Crescent, transforming it into a replica of the set for a series of film-themed stays. This will involve painting the facade of the house, blocking five parking spaces on the street, and bringing noise disruption to the area during the week.
Unsurprisingly some residents are furious, not just over the immediate inconvenience but what it represents: the creeping commodification of their community and the blurring line between private spaces and public playgrounds.
It might seem like harmless movie magic to outside visitors, but when a community is subjected to a constant influx of tourists the results can be disruptive and damaging. Overcrowding, traffic issues, increased litter, and a sense of invasion are all par for the course.
Chalcot Crescent isn’t the first location to face the burden of film tourism. The tiny Scottish town of Glenfinnan – with a population of just 150 – has seen coach-loads of visitors arrive to photograph the nearby Glenfinnan viaduct, which was featured in the ‘Harry Potter’ films.
According to National Trust Scotland, nearly half a million tourists visited the viaduct in the first 10 months of 2023, causing ‘complete gridlock’ on local roads and instances of public urination due to a lack of sufficient public toilets.
Similarly, the village of Bampton in Oxfordshire has become a hotspot for ‘Downton Abbey’ devotees. Residents of this sleepy village now face hordes of tourists who arrive by the busload, bringing with them litter, noise, and little contribution to the local economy.
The crux of the problem with film tourism is that it reimagines real places as fantasy worlds. But these real places have real people in them. And the more they’re treated as a tourist destination, the more this distinction fades, leaving locals to bear the brunt of poorly managed tourism while reaping little reward.
