STORYTELLING – THE TOOL OF DESTINATION MANAGEMENT COMPANIES FOR CREATING AN EXTRAORDINARY EXPERIENCE IN FILM TOURISM

Experience-based industries, such as tourism, gain a competitive advantage when they create an extraordinary experience for their customers. Contemporary tourists prefer authentic experiences, acquisition of new knowledge and skills as well as participation in community activities. Therefore, they don’t want to consume only the products and services in the destination, but they are really interested in the story behind the tourist products. In film tourism, the story has a special role since it is a type of product that arises from the individual experience of the location, which is displayed in some form of media presentation. Consequently, it is particularly important for the destination management companies to use tools and techniques that can influence the customer experience. In this context, the aim of this paper is to analyse possibility of destination management companies to use storytelling in creating film tourism products. Although storytelling is often used by destination management organization as a destination marketing tool, destination management companies can use it to create high value-added products. This paper analyzes an example of good practice how a destination management company can use storytelling in creating and developing its products. However, as the example of good practice emphasizes, the application of storytelling in creating extraordinary experience requires an interdisciplinary approach and great creativity of experts from different fields, where additional value can be achieved through the use of modern information and communication technology. Applying this approach, storytelling is a tool that destination management companies can use very successfully to transform the film tourism product into an extraordinary experience for their customers