Planning in the Digital Era: Films and Social Media as Information Sources for Tourism Planning

Films deliver subliminal promotion to audience about the visual appeal of a certain place. If the place looks picturesque enough and gives a memorable impression to the audience, it has a possibility to become the next tourism magnet. Tourists tend to take pictures as keepsakes and upload them on social media. The number of social media posts of a place can be utilized as a tool to measure and map people's interest. This process is a voluntary advertisement of the place done by community caused by the culture of content sharing in the digital era. This paper is going to elaborate the growth of Gereja Ayam (Chicken Church) in Magelang, Indonesia, as the place which were formerly insignificant and publicly unknown, but has been featured in an Indonesian film Ada Apa dengan Cinta 2. An analysis of the place's popularity is conducted using Google search trends, looking for related keyword search about places mentioned before. The number of Instagram posts using related hashtags is used to examine how many people have visited the place. A literature review is also being carried out to find the correlation between the media exposure and the place branding, the analysis of place's popularity through social media, and how this can contribute as tools for urban and tourism planning.