Game of Thrones – the Tourist Traps

As a tourist, one of the ways to get to know a city or area is through a specific tour. You can book a full holiday with a tourguide, choose a 4-hour city tour or go on a hike with a nature guide. Or you could always book a Game of Thrones tour.

Seriously, with 6 seasons of the tv-series now filmed, you could fill any waiting time between seasons with GoT filmlocation tours. Since the series has been filming in so many (European) locations, there are a lot of iconic places to visit, and local governments and entrepreneurs have been jumping on the chance to make money out of it. Tourism has surged in places where Game of Thrones was filmed, so it’s no wonder that for instance a new filming location like Girona, Spain, had no problems with shutting parts of the small city down for a month – knowing they’d get tourists back in droves for the other 11 months of the year…

To give you an idea, here’s some of the tours you can do:

Game of Thrones Tour, Northen Ireland – love the disclaimer on their fancy website, that says: Game of Thrones Tours is operated by Game of Thrones Tours Ltd (Belfast, UK) and Hand of the King Ltd (Dublin, Ireland). It is not affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by HBO, nor anyone associated with Game of Thrones®.

Winterfell Tours, Northern Ireland – their website has a picture of people cosplaying while on a bike and they also offer Glamping (fancy camping) in Night’s Watch outfits. I’m not sure Jon Snow would approve…

In general, Northern Ireland is really the home of the most tours. Which makes sense, since all of the studio sets are located in and around Belfast too – and have been since season 1. Unfortunately, the studio locations can’t be visited, and many of the Irish exterior locations are less iconic than for instance those in Croatia:

Viator Dubrovnik Tour – The word “exclusive” is used a lot for this tour, but… hey, we found another tour in Dubrovnik as well and I bet there’s many more. But the Dubrovnik city council is trying to keep everything regulated; they officially endorsed the Viator tour (hence the “exclusive”) and they made their own King’s Landing map that you can get at the tourist office. Croatia definitely has it’s GoT tourism well thought out and it’s definitely the country I see appearing most in holiday pictures on any Facebook or Instagram timeline.

GoT Tour Reykjavik – The pictures on the site depict very sunny, green locations which will make you go “Huh? I don’t recognise this.” Which is true because Iceland was season 2 and 3’s ‘North of the Wall’ area, and filming took place in minus 10 degrees Celcius. This 5-day trip at least has some snow pictures, but they also send you to a modern city on the second day that has nothing to do with GoT whatsoever. I guess Iceland needs to work on its tourism skills a bit more.

On to Spain. The people of the Best GoT Spain Private Tour are apparently location consultants for movies and they promise you a “Private Luxury Tour + Crystal Clear English”. They might, however, want to brush up on their GoT knowledge because this tour seems like a cheap, sorry, luxury, excuse to sell a generic tour through Spain. They only mention Dorne locations and for the rest of the week they just want to give you luxury food.. The Zicasso tour sounds a lot better, but that one is luxury too – over 8000 Euro’s of luxury, to be precise.

It’s hard to find other proper Spanish GoT tours, so if you’re in Spain (or want to move there) and you’re looking for a job, this might be your way to fast cash. The city of Girona learned a thing or two from Dubrovnik and has its own Viator Exclusive tour, so Sevilla might be your best bet to start a career as a tourguide.

-Julia