The boy Harry Potter asks one of the workers at Kings Cross train station in London about the platform number "3/4 9", so the man turns his face away from him, thinking that he is mocking him.

As the boy goes on his way, he hears a woman who remembers the name of the same platform, so he follows her and finds what her eyes can't believe, boys about his age entering a wall between platforms 9 and 10.

He asks the lady if he can enter like them through the wall to reach that sidewalk, and she encourages him to do so.

Harry Potter speeds up the steps to enter the wall before he finds himself on the sidewalk that he is going to, a magical fictional place in front of him is the "Hogwarts Express" that he is looking for in a movie from the famous Harry Potter series, which spanned 10 years from 2001 to 2011 and is based on the novels of the British writer JK Rowling.

A country like New Zealand bets every year on huge numbers of tourists who come specifically to experience the atmosphere of the movie "The Lord of the Rings", which was reinforced after the movie won Oscars.

Kings Cross station in London embodied this scene, located on the corner of one of its platforms, which was specially made to simulate the movie scene that was filmed there.

Tourists, young and old, line up in large numbers to take souvenir photos with the baggage cart that breaks through the wall.

Then the visitors find themselves in front of a whole shop in the middle of the large station in the name of Harry Potter, selling souvenirs of clothes and collectibles with pictures and logos of the Harry Potter movie.

It is a scene that embodies how a scene in a movie turns into a tourist attraction that attracts thousands of visitors, even if it was a small corner in a large and crowded train station.

Tourists, adults and children, line up in large numbers to take memorial photos with the luggage cart that breaks through the wall in the Harry Potter movie (social networking sites)

The station is one of the tourist destinations for visitors, in addition to other destinations such as the Harry Potter tour organized by tourism companies in the Scottish capital, Edinburgh, which has turned into one of the top 5 destinations for tourists who come to the city to live the experience of the writer who inspired the city with this famous story, so they sit in cafes The same in which she used to write, and they walk through the alleys among the old buildings, as if they were living inside the same movie, helped by the antiquity of the historical city, which was classified by UNESCO on the World Heritage List.

Northwest of Edinburgh, the steam train that appeared in the above movie scene is still working, carrying tourists on a journey of about 130 km between green hills, lakes and mountains in a third location that simulates scenes from Harry Potter films.

That is, we are in front of 3 cities in one country, each of which attracts thousands of visitors annually who are fond of entering the world of cinematic fantasy that they saw on the silver screen after the cinema turned the monuments into a visual story that visitors seek to discover for themselves.

This, in addition to other sites related to the same film, such as "Alnwick Castle" in England, in which the "Hogwarts" school scenes were filmed in the film.

We are not talking here about an exceptional case, but about a well-known phenomenon in the tourism industry, which is that tens of millions of tourists determine their travel destination based on a movie they watched or a television program.

Cinematic tourism experiences

This does not mean that cinema has become a direct advertising medium for tourism, but rather that tourism, like many other sectors, can invest cinematic success in local development.

A country like New Zealand is betting every year on huge numbers of tourists who come specifically to experience the atmosphere of the movie "The Lord of the Rings".

Which was reinforced after the film won Oscars.

New Zealand is a prime example in this regard because it has been able to generate billions of dollars in tourism revenues because of cinema.

The same experience was experienced by the state of Iceland with the tourists who flocked to it to visit the filming sites of the movie "Game of Thrones".

Another area of ​​cinematic tourism has to do with annual film festivals.

These festivals are usually elitist, but their intensification in one city over separate months, as happens in the French city of "Cannes", guarantees them a reputation and a large tourist presence throughout the year.

This is because, in addition to the famous Cannes International Film Festival, the city hosts another annual market for documentaries called "MIPDOC" and a third market for television programs called "MIPTV", which are international events that attract thousands of visitors every year and have managed to transform the city The French coast has become one of the important artistic capitals in the world for everything related to the production of films and television programs.

In the Arab world, some countries are trying to follow the example of New Zealand, such as Tunisia, which announced last year the launch of "Tunisia is our destination", which includes a tour that traces the sites where famous international films such as "Star Wars" and "Lee" were filmed. ) and other films, and the track includes 12 sites distributed in 9 regions from the north to the south of the country, which are the city of Tunis, Monastir, Kairouan, Nefta and Daccache, as well as Medenine, Matmata, Tataouine and Djerba.

Many countries give film tourism different names such as screen tourism or literature and screen tourism to expand the scope of the relationship between the literature industry, cinema and tourist attraction technologies.

And if there are experiences that countries greatly encourage, such as the experience of New Zealand, there are many experiences that are not based on famous and well-known films, but rather small business owners are encouraged to search and invest in a site that became famous in a movie or series in order to take individual initiatives to make it a tourist destination.

In this regard, I remember how the novel and series "Sunset Oasis" by the late Egyptian writer Bahaa Taher contributed to introducing Egyptians and Arabs to Siwa Oasis, which lies in the heart of the eastern desert of Egypt, and how one of the city's notables commented on this matter, saying that these works increased the number of tourists to this wonderful oasis. Full of beauty, springs of water and healing sand.