Tourismaccounts for around one tenth of global GDP. We analyze the impact ofentertainment media in drawing tourists to filming locations (media multiplier)and, in turn, the effect of tourism on local economic development (tourismmultiplier). To assess the media multiplier, we employ a triple-differenceempirical strategy exploiting the staggered international release across the EUof "Inspector Montalbano", a TV series set in four municipalities ofSicily, a region of Italy. We find that the series release led to a fourfoldincrease in the number of tourists and boosted tourist expenditure by a factorof 2.5. Furthermore, we provide evidence of positive spillovers in nearbymunicipalities. To estimate the tourism multiplier, we exploit the interaction betweenthe filming locations and the time-varying share of countries in which theseries was aired, to instrument total tourist expenditure at themunicipality-time level. Our results show that a 10% increase in total touristexpenditure translates into an increase in municipal income of 4.7%. The papersuggests that both entertainment media and tourism can be powerful tools toboost economic development.

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