THE HOTTEST trend in travel for the 2007 season, according to one of Ulster's leading international tourism crystal-ball gazers (yes,me), is covered by that clever phrase 'set-jetting'.

Those who once loved to be called jet-setters, flying to sundry destinations to enjoy simple pleasures such as lying in the sun getting skin cancer, are now going one stage further and aiming for places that have been used as TV/ movie locations or sets - thus earning the title 'set-jetters'.

The fascination with movies and their stars has become a huge global business in recent years, as the cult of celebrity continues unchecked. Exotic James Bond movie locations are tops, followed by the usual good-filming-weather locations around California, the Med and North Africa.

New Zealand is said to have trebled its tourism turnover since the success of the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy highlighted its magical landscapes. Closer to home, the new "Miss Potter biopic of children's author Beatrix Potter is set to give its Lake District locations a new lease of life.

Now Belfast tourism bosses are no doubt hoping for the same golden spin-off from a Forthcoming Attraction with Ring in its title, namely 'Closing the Ring'. This is the true story of a WWII air crash on the Cave Hill / Black Mountain area. The dying rear-gunner of an Ulster-based USAAF B-17 bomber gives a ring to a local to be returned to his girlfriend in the USA. Fifty years on, the ring is found again and a search is made to find the girl, now an older lady (Shirley MacLaine).

This is the most expensive production ever filmed here - I heard £11.5m, including some money from the taxpayer-funded NI Film Commission which was unhelpful, to say the least, when I asked if they had a location photo to go with this article. I wonder why!

The movie is directed by Richard Attenborough and stars Ms MacLaine as well as Christopher Plummer and Brenda Fricker plus a clatter of Canadian actors and a (very) few real Ulster actors.

Some of it was filmed in Belfast last spring, with exteriors shot in North Belfast and on the the Belfast Hills, with local interiors being lensed in Titanic Studios which is, some of you will know, the grand new name for what used to be the derelict Maysfield Leisure Centre owned by Belfast City Council. Universal Studios Hollywood it ain't!

The remaining footage was shot last summer in Ontario, with Hamilton Airport standing in for the wartime US Airforce Base at Langford Lodge, Crumlin, as well as North Carolina (Canada is very versatile!).

Alas, I cannot find a release date for 'Closing the Ring', but it's supposed to be fairly soon. The project was first announced years ago, but funding was a continual problem and I understand that finding a distributor has added to post-production delays.

Lord Attenborough - let me be the first to call him 'Lord of the Ring' before every film reviewer uses it on release - is a great director but I can't really see the movie being an international blockbuster.

Nevertheless, I have no doubt that later this year there will be Black Taxi Tours to the Cave Hill/Black Mountain area to see where the crash scenes were filmed; then to to Fortwilliam to see where a terrace of houses was bulldozed to look like a Luftwaffe landmine had just landed, then to Maysfield to see what an ex-leisure centre looks like.

Wartime Belfast may not have the same global 'set-jetting' appeal as the Lord of the Rings mountains of New Zealand, the 'Baywatch' beaches of California or even the 'Last of the Summer Wine's' Holmfirth, but we should make the best job possible of promoting it.

It is certain to have more tourism success than the attempt to cash in on last year's kids' blockbuster 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' because CS Lewis, writer of the original stories, happened to have been born in East Belfast about a century earlier.

Why? Because there's hardly anything for tourists to SEE. Like our Titanic heritage - but that's another story...

My pub crawl with Robert Mitchum

MY OWN FIRST personal 'set-jetting' experience was to the location of 'Ryan's Daughter' on the Dingle Peninsula of Kerry when I was the young film columnist of the Belfast News Letter during the time it was being filmed.

(My column was titled Film Scene, but because I hated sitting in empty cinemas during the Troubles, it was known to unkind colleagues at the time - including the man who is now Editor of this newspaper - as Films Unseen.)

Well, the trip to Dingle was not so much jetting as jolting, since I had to go by train - an uncomfortable nine-hour journey via Dublin and Tralee, as I painfuilly recall.

I had been invited, along with two dozen other journos, to get a glimpse behind the scenes of David Lean's Oscar-winning epic which is still a big draw on TV to this day, nearly 40 years later.

Ryan's Daughter has done for the Dingle district what The Quiet Man has done for Cong, Co Mayo - making them Ireland's pioneer set-jetting movie location attractions. Thousands travel to magnificent Inch Strand near Dingle every year to see where Sarah Miles had her first romantic encounter with Robert Mitchum even though it was secretly re-shot, I'm told, on some beach in the tropics where the sun was stronger and the sand more sugary.

Anyway, we were taken to the movie set of 'Kirrary' which looked like a real Oirish village from the outside but was merely (apart from Ryan's pub itself) a lot of façades shored up by timber. My abiding memory of the Schoolhouse set was the sight of gorgeous hippie set dressers from London pinning on bright green leaves to the bare tree in the playground...

At the Press reception in the Dingle hotel later, I met Sarah Miles and her husband, the screenplay writer Robert Bolt, Trevor Howard, John Miles, Christopher Jones and Sir David Lean himself. My cup ranneth over (literally) when I met - and got drunk with - one of my all-time Hollywood movie heroes, Robert 'Call me Bob' Mitchum himself.

Now that I have been teetotal for many years, I could tell the story of my pub-crawl around the only 12 bars in Dingle from which the infamously aggressive Mr Mitchum had not yet been barred - but I won't, mostly because I was not used to Jack Daniels whisky and have little memory of my Night Out with the Hollywood Hell-raiser between 8pm and whatever time I got back to the Press hotel.

Nowadays, any young journalist lucky enough to spend a whole night getting legless with an international superstar could sell the sordid story worldwide for thousands of pounds, making up what he couldn't remember.

All I got out of my encounter was a very,very sore head and a sick stomach that forced me to lean out of the train window every inch of the 3,510 tortuous miles back to Belfast...

Cool Belfast is Sky TV's hottest destination

I WAS GRATIFIED to note that classy Claire Smith of Sky TV's Travel Shop has named BELFAST as one of the world's hottest new destinations in her 2007 Holiday Wish List published in Sky Magazine. She cites our "unbeatable selection of cool urban bars, eateries and clubs." Predictably, she singles out The Crown Bar because "I've enjoyed the craic there!" Surprise, surprise.

For the record, she also tips other world-famous destinations like PARGA, Greece; CAMPECHE, Mexico; PAMUKKALE,Turkey and AUSTIN, Texas. No, I've never even heard of the first three either, but I once spent a whole week in Austin one Sunday. That's another way of saying that I found it to be the second most boring place in the USA after Lynchburg, Tennessee, where a fed-up teenager told me: "The folks here roll up the sidewalk downtown at six o'clock." Sounds familiar!

Trevor comes up Trumps

NEXT MONTH I'll be reporting on my latest travels - a really exciting trip to Eilat, Israel, from where I will be be revealing whether or not the Red Sea is really red.

Before I left I had to to find and book a hotel for just one night at Heathrow. I spent two frustrating hours trying all the usual hotel discount websites which continually crashed, gave outdated info, or screwed up in other ways. I almost broke my New Year Resolution to stop blaming and bashing my stupid computer.

It suddenly occured to me that a good travel agent could save hassle and sort it out so I called Laser London and European City Breaks at Frances Street, Newtownards (028 9182 0914). Trevor McEvoy's team sorted it out in seconds, finding a Special Offer for one of the best Heathrow hotels.

Trevor arranged one of my most memorable citybreaks ever - a weekend in Amsterdam that I still savour with a smile...