New Zealand? Oh, you mean the place where Lord of the Rings was made?

Basically the only thing I knew about New Zealand when picking this class was, that the “Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” trilogies were filmed in the country and, therefore, also that the scenery is amazing and extremely diverse.

So I thought, why not write about these films and about the impact they had on this beautiful country.

After the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy aired New Zealand apparently had a 50% increase in tourist arrivals and that is a huge deal for a country where tourism is one of the biggest industries. Since the first Hobbit was released a few years later the numbers increased again, which most likely also has a lot do with New Zealand’s marketing of the film.

Shortly before it was released the postal service offered stamps with the faces of different characters from the movie on them, there were commemorative coins and the New Zealand Custom Service stamped visitor’s passports with a “Welcome to Middle Earth” stamp.

There are also two Air New Zealand planes which are decorated in a Middle Earth theme and on top of that they had a Middle Earth safety video, which some of you might have seen on TV or on the Internet.

But what will happen when the hype about the Tolkien saga eventually dies down? Who knows, it may take 10, 20 or even 50 years but someday people will stop visiting just to see the sets of these films.

Well, New Zealand certainly knows how much the film tourism helps them. For that reason they even introduced tax incentives for large scale productions and in 2014 the New Zealand screen production grant was founded by which international production can get a 20 % baseline grant. This plus the impressive environment will certainly be an incentive for production companies to make their new films in New Zealand, too.

One of these future attractions might for example be the sequel of James Cameron’s Avatar which was shot in Wellington and will be released in 2017. I’m certainly looking forward to the new ways in which New Zealand will market blue aliens in comparison to hobbits and elves.