Introduction
Tourism is a diverse and exciting way to experience society and the world because it offers a variety of opportunities in different directions. The successful realization of these opportunities creates a sustainable environment where natural and social integration principles are respected. Marine Science and Technology aims to protect biodiversity and preserve the richness of water objects. In the educational sector, it is helpful to show films about marine life. Film tourism is an integral part of tourism, and for sustainable ecological development, this idea can be realized in the format of a movie night or a video for children. By nurturing love and understanding of natural objects from a young age, children can fully contribute to water conservation.
Location
Marine Science and Technology is an educational and research center dedicated to marine conservation. MaST offers courses for college students as well as individual and group programs. The center’s organization allows young researchers to conduct experiments in a natural ecosystem. There is a large pool with many marine species living in Puget Sound for public use (About the MaST center). MaST’s programs teach about the relationship between maritime objects and humans. They promote social responsibility and tourist attractions with an understanding of their impact on nature.
Film Tourism as a Branch of Sustainable Tourism Development
Film tourism is a relatively new direction of leisure, which is a visit to the location where the shooting of a movie took place. With the help of film tourism, it is possible to attract many people to the particular problems faced by the object featured in the film. It is a promising trend characterized by people’s desire to integrate into a new environment (Kim & Park, 2021). Since it is a relatively recent phenomenon, there are still gaps in sustainability. Changing this requires strategies to address the impact of tourism on the site. Consequently, film tourism should intersect with education or some source of information that will allow tourists to become familiar with the rules of conduct at the site before the trip.
Idea
Educational programs for any tourism are a chance to increase tourists’ preparation for the trip to any object. For film tourism, learning how to draw parallels between the movies and the natural objects the story is about is essential. For film tourism to marine sites, knowledge of marine fauna and flora can be critical, especially if you don’t know how to behave with animals: whether fish bites are dangerous, whether jellyfish are benign, whether there are no sharks in the area, and so on.
Marine wildlife remains largely unexplored, with many corners of the oceans still not fully explored due to technological or other limitations. Everyone understands their connection to nature in their way, but it is invariably necessary to promote its preservation (Yi et al., 2022). This means that the sustainable development of film tourism for marine sites is to safely increase integration into the environment and reduce damage to the sea. Attractiveness – the property describing people’s desire to visit a particular area should be an integral part of film tourism, but it should be born out of an educational program.
For the MaST center, the idea of sustainable development of film tourism and preservation of biodiversity of the marine environment is a movie night followed by educational theses. Films are an excellent way to get information to people, and MaST can do this in conjunction with the School Groups Education Program for children’s groups. Since children are responsible for the planet’s future, education is an opportunity to prevent them from negatively impacting nature. The fundamental idea is to hold travel movie screenings for children in grades 4-6, followed by a short lecture and animal demonstration from the movies. Even movies like Finding Nemo or The Little Mermaid are good educational opportunities. Children will be able to see the marine animals from the movies in the MaST Aquarium and get a closer look at the wildlife. This will positively impact their future film trips in the aftermath – they will do some pre-trip education and learn about how to be a sustainable tourist beforehand.
In addition to conducting screenings, the idea of sustainability is to make films with children. For example, a school group films short stories about underwater creatures living in an aquarium at MaST then shows the area and mentions that such research centers are essential for conservation. Perhaps doing experiments on your own in a video to demystify that every action has a consequence for marine ecology, so one should behave appropriately. Such events will strengthen film tourism as a branch of educational and water tourism. They will raise awareness of global issues in sustainable ecological environments and increase attention to wild marine environments.
Conclusions and Recommendations
Thus, it is clear that film tourism is a promising tool for raising awareness of the state of natural sites. It affects the big three: society, ecology, and economy, thereby acting as a catalyst for doing the right thing. Due to the educational segment, film tourism will be able to establish itself among other types of tourism and take an important place in the general tourist environment (Yi et al., 2022). It will solve the lack of public awareness of the potential harm it causes to the environment. Consequently, with the development of film tourism, society will be more cautious about other types of tourism. It can lead to a proper environmentally friendly lifestyle, thereby contributing to the preservation of the environment.
References
About the MaST Center. (n.d.).
Kim, S., & Park, E. (2021). An integrated model of social impacts and resident’s perceptions: From a film tourism destination. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research. doi: 10.1177/10963480211011641
Yi, K., Zhu, Jing, Xie, C., Tu, R., & Zhu, Jianfei. (2022). Sustainable development for film-induced tourism: from the perspective of value perception. Frontiers is Psychology. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.875084