one-in-five visitors from the United States<\/a> last year booked their trip because of the trilogy – with tour operators reporting a renewed surge in demand for Lord of the Rings experiences.<\/p>\nRebecca Lower, from Iowa, said the movies were the key reason New Zealand was on her radar and the catalyst for being in Queenstown this month.<\/p>\n
“This is my senior year of high school and we’re taking a trip one place anywhere in the world – and I decided I wanted to come to New Zealand to visit all of the filming locations with my mum, who’s also a big fan,” she said.<\/p>\n
Their itinerary included a trip to Hobbiton, a hike in Tongariro National Park, a visit to W\u0113t\u0101 Workshop and a tour of film locations around Central Otago, Lower said.<\/p>\n
“It’s a lot of fun being able to pretend for a while that I’m in some fantasy world,” she said.<\/p>\n
Southern Trails, which runs Trails of Middle Earth tours, offers a range of trips to filming locations with opportunities to see and handle replica props and dress up in fellowship-style cloaks.<\/p>\n
Owner Shane Pinder said bookings had almost doubled since restarting the company in 2023 and it now offered helicopter tours.<\/p>\n
“People are really craving for more Middle Earth,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got a third vehicle; we’ve got another $15,000 worth of props; we’ve got now six guides – whereas we were just two for the first year … and we’re continuing to grow.”<\/p>\n
Most visitors had grown up with the movies, he said.<\/p>\n
“This is their dream to get over here and see all the locations where the films took place.”<\/p>\n
A few kilometres away, Silky Otter cinemas offers 13-hour Lord of the Rings movie marathons every week, comprising all three of the extended editions of the films with introductions by Peter Jackson.<\/p>\n
![\"Peter](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/4JRH2JZ_Peter_Janssen_from_Belgium_said_he_was_inspired_to_visit_New_Zealand_because_of_Lord_of_the_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
\nPeter Janssen from Belgium said he was inspired to visit New Zealand because of Lord of the Rings.
\nPhoto: RNZ \/ Katie Todd\n<\/p>\n
Cinema manager Clem Walker said the sessions – running from 10am to 11pm every Tuesday – typically drew 10 to 20 viewers with most staying right until the end.<\/p>\n
“It carries us through quiet seasons and during the winter season it’s going to be even bigger again,” he said.<\/p>\n
Many viewers were locals on working holidays or fans closing the circle after visiting filming sites – a final stop on their Middle Earth mission, he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s almost 4D, being able to walk out and immediately look out the windows at Middle Earth itself,” he said.<\/p>\n
“To say you’ve seen it in a cinema is a novelty, but to say you’ve seen it surrounded by most of the major filming locations – it’s just that extra step.<\/p>\n
“I think the whole tourism industry of New Zealand is on a growth curve that sort of parallels Lord of the Rings fandom as well. It just runs quite closely. We’re not planning on stopping at all.”<\/p>\n
North American travel company GoWay had also recorded a rise in people seeking out Lord of the Rings adventures.<\/p>\n
![\"Shane](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/4JRH1XU_Shane_Pinder_from_Southern_Trails_which_runs_Trails_of_Middle_Earth_Lord_of_the_Rings_Tours_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
\nShane Pinder from Southern Trails which runs Trails of Middle Earth Lord of the Rings Tours.
\nPhoto: RNZ \/ Katie Todd\n<\/p>\n
After the company updated its itineraries last year, interest in New Zealand trips featuring movie stop-offs almost doubled, South Pacific vice president Anthony Saba said.<\/p>\n
“Our search data tells us we’re getting a lot more people hitting these packages … once we rejigged them to be a little bit more Middle Earth, Lord of the Rings-focused in some of the labelling,” he said.<\/p>\n
People typically were not going soley for movie-related experiences, but it was a key reason for their interest, Saba said.<\/p>\n
“I think what happened was it made people research New Zealand more and they learned more about it, M\u0101ori culture, the scenery, Milford Sound,” he said.<\/p>\n
It will be 25 years since the premier of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and 12 years since the final Hobbit movie – The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies in December. <\/p>\n
Tourism New Zealand said last year’s International Visitor Survey showed 14 percent of arrivals to the country were motivated by The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films.<\/p>\n
Among visitors from the USA, that figure rose to 18 percent, it said.<\/p>\n
“Once here, 26 percent of visitors went to or participated in a film location, tour or experience, this was 37 percent for visitors from the US,” a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
Saba said long-time fans now had the time and money to travel.<\/p>\n
“A lot of people who were really interested in the Lord of the Rings movies 25 years ago, they may have been in their 20s. And that drove a lot of interest to New Zealand. But a lot of those people, North Americans, don’t travel until they get into their 50s and do this kind of a trip. So I think what we’re seeing now is that generation…now fulfilling the dream of going to New Zealand,” he said.<\/p>\n
Shane Pinder believed a sense of nostalgia was contributing.<\/p>\n
“It’s this cycle that you see in pop culture, whether it’s music and fashion, movies – people hark back to their younger days. Twenty-five years just seems to be that kind of number where people always look back. I see a lot of people listening to early 2000s music and dressing the way that I dressed when I was in high school. And I guess Lord of the Rings was a huge part of the early 2000s pop culture – these were the biggest films of the early 2000s, 17 Academy Awards,” he said.<\/p>\n
“That’s not to say that there wasn’t fandom in between, but it definitely seems like there’s a resurgence of it.”<\/p>\n
Peter Janssen, a fan from Belgium, said it was all about the power of the ring.<\/p>\n
“It’s so unique the way they were filmed, the location here, it’s just amazing. I think it just has a lot of influence on people’s lives,” he said.<\/p>\n
“For me New Zealand was always high on the list – but mainly because of Lord of the Rings,” he said.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rebecca Lower from Iowa is hoping to visit Hobbiton Tongariro National Park and Weta Workshop as well as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,47,156,409,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":["post-348517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Rebecca](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/4JRH2EC_Rebecca_Lower_from_Iowa_is_hoping_to_visit_Hobbiton_Tongariro_National_Park_and_W_t_Workshop.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n