How Television Induced Tourism has Influenced Ballykissangel’s Residential Community

Media in all its forms can have a strong influence over people’s decisions and decision-making processes. This has become more widely recognised in recent times in relation to tourism and the choices people make on where they will travel to and spend their leisure time. Films (in their cinematic role) and television programmes and series have become fundamental to what many people now base their travel decisions on. Authors such as Butler examined this influence as far back as 1990 even though such forms of media have arguably been influencing people for much longer. This paper identifies the impact of television induced tourism on destinations, which have become popular tourist destinations as a result of their featuring in a television series. The purpose of this paper is to consider the influence of television induced tourism on a small rural based community in Ireland and how it can actually influence tourist development to a destination. This subject is now becoming even more popular as a research discipline in the tourism and management fields; Mordue (1996), Riley and Van Doren (1992), Gartner (1993), Bolan and Davidson (2005), Tooke and Baker (2002), Grihault (2003), Beeton(2005) and O’Connor (2000, 2005). Few studies to date have examined this phenomenon and its impact in Ireland however. Something this study does for the area of Avoca in Wicklow, the setting for the fictional village of Ballykissangel in the television series of the same name. The impact of the series and the role it has played in development of the area are examined here in the overall context of television induced tourism.