James Bond and Harry Potter on a mission to lure Arabian Gulf visitors to UK

Britain is pushing its film locations to drive up high-spending tourist numbers from the Gulf.

From left, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint and Daniel Radcliffe are shown in a scene from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. AP Photo/Warner Bros/Jaap Buitendijk

What connects Harry Potter, James Bond and Sherlock Holmes?

They all feature in the United Kingdom’s latest push to promote its famous film locations to drive up high-spending visitor numbers from the Arabian Gulf countries.

Attractions include a135-kilometre round trip on a Jacobite steam train that runs across the Glenfinnan Viaduct in Scotland, as seen in Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets. GCC tourists might also be interested in visiting Glen Coe, also in the Scottish Highlands, where Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was shot.

As part of the promotion, the Windsor-based British-Emirati filmmaker Ali Mostafa, director of City of Life (2009) and ambassador for VisitBritain, has helped put together an itinerary for a competition winner who is to be announced a month from now.

“I have never shot a feature film in the UK but my dream is to direct a Bond film in Pinewood Studios,” Mostafa said. Pinewood Studios, where Bond movies are shot, are a part of the film tour itinerary.

The Gulf-wide competition can be entered at www.facebook.com/LoveGreatBritain.

The major film locations that the agency is promoting through the competition also include the Scottish Highlands, the setting of James Bond films Skyfall and The World Is Not Enough, the Warner Bros studio associated with the making of the Harry Potter series and Sherlock Holmes’s London.

While tourists from the Gulf states represent only a small number of Britain’s tourist tally, these visitors (and in particular the UAE contingent) are among the freest spenders.

Last year, 256,000 visitors from the UAE – or nearly half the total visitor numbers from the Gulf states – visited Britain. About 32 million tourists from across the world visited the country the same year.

The per person per trip (two weeks on average) spending by UAE visitors in 2012 was about £2,500 (Dh15,000), just behind the Saudis who spent £3,245 per person.

Overall, Gulf visitors to Britain spent £1.17 billion last year, an increase of 33 per cent over 2011. These travelers spent £535 million in Britain during the first half of 2013, an increase of 18 per cent over the same period in 2012, according to VisitBritain.

Globally, the UAE ranked 11th in per night spending for holiday visitors.

“The main draw for visitors from this region is shopping and sports, and the challenge is to promote aspects of Britain that are less well known,” said Sandie Dawe, chief executive of VisitBritain, the UK’s tourism agency. “The target audience from this region is those under 30 years [of age].”

While nearly half of the foreign visitors to Britain visit London, only 10 per cent make it to Scotland and less than 4 per cent to Wales, Ms Dawe said.

Inbound tourism contributed £18.6bn to the British economy last year, and this year, VisitBritain expects the figure to rise to £20bn.