What if I told you that there was a museum dedicated to all things Game of Thrones set up at Linen Mills Studios in Banbridge, Northern Ireland, where key scenes of the actual show were filmed? What if I told you that the original sets for Castle Black and the Great Hall of Winterfell were there, as well as the set for Cersei’s map room in the Red Keep, and multitudinous props and costumes from the series? And what if I told you that the place was in financial trouble because not enough people had shown up?
Well, it’s all true: the museum is the Game of Thrones Studio Tour, and according to BBC News, it’s suffered “substantial operating losses” since opening in February of 2022. Accounts for John Hogg & Co, the Northern Ireland-based company that operates the studio tour, last year it took a pre-tax loss of £3.3m, or around $4 million.
John Hogg & Co chock up the slow start to “prevailing economic post-pandemic conditions,” aka tourists were still gunshy about traveling in early 2022. This is despite “highly positive reviews of the tour itself”
Can the Game of Thrones Studio Tour recover?
“Initial visitor numbers at the Game of Thrones tour were low,” the directors said. However, they “believe the studio tour is a world-class tourism offering [they] concede it will take time for the attraction to become established while the travel industry also recovers.”
John Hogg & Co have turned over control of the Game of Thrones Studio Tour to the US firm Stephens GOT LLC, which will inject around £5m (around $6.5 million) into the business.
Will that be enough to turn the Game of Thrones Studio Tour into the big success the developers want it to be? Maybe; with the tourism industry now truly bouncing back from COVID, that shouldn’t be as big a problem. And the continued success of spinoff show House of the Dragon can’t hurt.
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