Felicity Long
Can an animated film sell a destination?
Disney thought so when it partnered with VisitScotland to market Brave, a movie that was expected to have generated an estimated $200 million in overall tourism spending for Scotland within five years of its 2012 release.
The partnership was in some ways a bold move. After all, while it featured lush views of the Scottish countryside, Brave is, well, a cartoon. To translate those animated images into reality, the cross-marketing campaign featured an Adventures By Disney tour called Scotland: A Brave Adventure, and included visits to castles and areas in the Scottish Highlands similar to those portrayed in the film.
Now Disney has joined forces with another European tourism office, this time VisitNorway, to promote the current megahit Frozen.
For the few who haven’t heard of it, the animated movie is very loosely based on The Snow Queen, a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, and takes place in Norway.
At last count, Frozen had raked in more than $300 million in North America alone since its Nov. 27 opening, while nabbing both Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice awards, and an Academy Award nomination.
The benefits in terms of visitor numbers to Norway could be enormous, and tourism officials are understandably giddy. For one thing, the animation technique in the film is so advanced – it’s available in both 2D and 3D versions -- that the icy scenery becomes a character in the story.
Scenes of Northern Lights shining over castles, snowy fjords, traditional wooden stave churches and even Nordic trolls adorn the landscape, and the main characters wear traditional Norwegian clothing, ride around in sleds and hang out with reindeer.
To entice visitors, and especially families, to travel to Norway, VisitNorway and Disney are marketing a weeklong Norway: Fjords, Bergen & Oslo Adventures By Disney tour that follows, if not the footsteps of the animated characters, certainly the trail the filmmakers followed when scouting locations.
Like any good family itinerary, there are plenty of activities built into the trip, thanks in part to suggestions from VisitNorway and its local partners, according to Hege Vibeke Barnes, director of VisitNorway in New York.
“We won’t know until after the summer what the numbers will be, but we are already seeing a dramatic increase in visits to the VisitNorway website and in media exposure,” Barnes said.
On the Frozen section of the VisitNorway site, information about the Adventures By Disney tour is accompanied by descriptions of other tours designed for families that fans of the movie might also enjoy.
“There are a lot of programs in northern Norway, for example, where you can see the Northern Lights and that have active, hands-on activities perfect for families,” she said.
VisitNorway also held five trade seminars for travel agents this fall in advance of the movie’s release that were sold out with about 100 attendees each, Barnes said. And in February, the tourist offices of Scandinavia will launch a joint online destination training program for travel agents.
To ease air access, the low-coast carrier Norwegian Airline is opening four new routes to Norway from the U.S. in 2014, operating from San Francisco, Los Angeles and Orlando to Oslo to complement the existing Ft. Lauderdale/Oslo service, as well as new service from New York to Bergen.