The ‘White Lotus’ impact: How fabulous TV places are reshaping luxurious journey and infuriating locals

Every season of HBO’s intellectual whodunit The White Lotus begins with a homicide. So it someway felt applicable that this dockside kerfuffle coincided with the subsequent season of the present being filmed close by in St.-Tropez and Cannes, for doubtless launch in 2027. The present’s tragicomic plot, it appeared, had spilled down the coast to this rosé-and-retirees village, Bandol.

Thankfully, the person quickly sat up, recovered from the episode—however by then I had already conjured elaborate schemes in an alternate narrative universe: a scalpel-tipped parasol! Arsenic in his afternoon pastis!

My boat to the White Lotus–esque island resort Zannier Île de Bendor scooted out of the marina because the crimson flash of ambulances infected the blue-and-peach palette of the Côte d’Azur. What character on this story was I enjoying? I questioned because the coast shrunk away. A snotty journey journalist with existential ideas on pillow firmness and gown materials? Sounds about proper.

Film and TV have a manner of rewiring our brains and influencing our habits, and nowhere is that felt extra relentlessly than in journey. In current years, TV exhibits and films have modified tourism habits world wide. Paddington went to Peru; households adopted aboard Belmond’s luxurious prepare, Andean Explorer. Emily in Paris put Paris again within the highlight. Thanks to a different HBO juggernaut, Game of Thrones, Croatia’s Dubrovnik—whose walled outdated metropolis stood in for King’s Landing—was so thronged by followers of the fantasy present that the federal government enabled native municipalities to restrict cruise and vehicular visitors and prohibit alcohol gross sales.

And the pattern is just not restricted to bundle excursions and area of interest fandoms; it’s additionally reworking the posh journey sector. Once, we jet-setted. Now, it seems, we set-jet.

This phenomenon of touring to upscale filming places didn’t originate with The White Lotus, however the sequence, whose earlier seasons passed off in Maui, Sicily, and Thailand, is usually held up as its frothiest instance. “[The White Lotus] is definitely a conversation that comes up,” says Jessica Eknaian, a Philadelphia-based advisor with the luxe journey company Fora, who lately deliberate a $75,000 Thailand journey to the present’s filming resorts for a household of 4. “It adds a fantasy element to the vacation,” she says.

After a beat, throughout which she in all probability thought-about the truth that the present has centered largely on the obliviousness of the rich, she clarified: “I don’t know that they want to be like these characters.”

For locations and their tourism industries, set-jetting is usually a jackpot. According to a University of Montana report, the neo-Western drama Yellowstone at the very least partially motivated 2.1 million vacationers to go to Montana in 2021, producing greater than $730 million in income. Tourism in Thailand has risen 300% for the reason that White Lotus therapy, based on Thailand’s Department of International Trade Promotion.

Of course, there have additionally been disagreeable unintended effects, together with overtourism and worth gouging. Some luxurious properties within the realm of Game of Thrones, like Hotel Katarina in Croatia’s seafront city of Orebić, have distanced themselves from the sequence. “While Dubrovnik continues to feel the long tail of Game of Thrones, travelers come to us for the Adriatic as it truly is, not the version shaped by global pop culture,” says common supervisor Olga Krizmanić, delivering a dracarys-tier burn.

Earlier this summer season, a shopper of Eknaian’s staying in Sicily’s Taormina—the place these points have grow to be an actual bugaboo following season two of The White Lotus—texted from the seashore of her resort a photograph of beleaguered vacationers sardined right into a motorboat with “White Lotus Tours” emblazoned on the aspect.

Fabulous on-screen places inspiring cinephiles to journey is nothing new, to make certain. The velocity—and the rise of social media—is what separates the historic set-jetting set off by Roman Holiday and Murder on the Orient Express from the follow because it exists immediately. “I’d like to say it’s because people are inspired by what they are seeing on TV—in the way that David Attenborough or The English Patient inspired me when I was younger to travel. But I think this is about the need for Instagram-TikTok hits,” says Jules Perowne, founding father of a travel-focused communications agency with places of work on three continents. “I actually think it destroys destinations.”

As Perowne notes, the gasoline of social media has turned a lovingly nurtured campfire of long-gestating wanderlust right into a four-alarm inferno. But it comes from an comprehensible want, says Jimmy Carroll, cofounder of Pelorus Travel, whose journeys embrace a three-night journey of drama and deception based mostly on Peacock’s Emmy-winning actuality present The Traitors ($157,500 for 12 friends). Set-jetting resonates, he says, “because it allows people to imagine themselves inside the story rather than simply watching it unfold.”

Euan Cherry—Peacock/Getty Images

The Traitors, in addition to the time-traveling romance Outlander, has led to a rush for luxurious fortress stays within the mythic Scottish Highlands. Fans of the previous are so keen to go to Ardross Castle, the place The Traitors is filmed—at $7,300 an evening, based on the unconfirmed determine circulated on-line—that the property’s web site advises: “Before you contact us, please note, we have no availability whatsoever for 2026 nor 2027.” Redditors have responded with backdoor instructions and satellite tv for pc maps.

Back on the Côte d’Azur, I used to be nonetheless misplaced within the White Lotus of all of it. And at Zannier Île de Bendor I discovered a lodge that exudes the historical past and intrigue befitting a juicy thriller. Established by liquor magnate Paul Ricard in 1950, it was a getaway for Josephine Baker and Salvador Dalí throughout its heyday. Sailboats, yachts, even the occasional submersible drifted by the turquoise shallows ringing the island, and the visitor checklist throughout my complimentary keep featured an amusing, Agatha Christie–esque forged: a WASPy couple with a nervy greyhound; a trio of extroverted Australian empty nesters; the style influencers Laura and Nicolas Herbert.

Were this an precise season of White Lotus, I believed whereas studying {a magazine} on the splendid pool arcing out over the Mediterranean, one in all them wouldn’t make it.

And simply then, a fats bumblebee wandered over from the groves of lavender and oleander and landed on my journal. I attempted to blow it away, but it surely refused to budge, its sucker probing a Tiffany advert.

It occurred to me, as I blew extra forcefully, that I’d by no means been stung by a bee. I had no cause to assume that I’d be allergic. But truthfully, wouldn’t that be the best plot twist?

Iconic display locations that impressed generations of vacationers

1942: Casablanca
Was this legendary romance filmed in Morocco? Nope. Did that cease vacationers from flocking there? Also, nope. Such was the enduring curiosity within the fictional Rick’s Café, the daughter of an American diplomat opened an actual café with that title in 2004.

1953: Roman Holiday
The draw of the Eternal City is, nicely, everlasting. But it received an additional increase from the romantic chemistry and comedic timing of Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck, with town backdrop rendered in gorgeous black and white. Book the San Pietro Suite on the iconic Hassler Roma, Hepburn’s house throughout filming.

1977–86: The Love Boat
Though primarily filmed on soundstages, this cruise-set sequence introduced Acapulco, Sydney, and different unique locations into American dwelling rooms. The Love Boat walked so Below Deck might run.

2000: The Beach
Twenty-five years earlier than White Lotus went to Southeast Asia, this desert-island thriller put backpacking tradition on the massive display and gave numerous viewers their first take a look at Thailand’s gorgeous seashores.

2003: Lost in Translation
Tokyo performs the third wheel in Sofia Coppola’s Oscar winner. The Park Hyatt, the place a lot of the film was shot, simply reopened after a large renovation.

Literally Every James Bond Movie, 1962–2021
Few movies make journey look as thrilling and trendy as Ian Fleming’s 007 adventures, which have been shot in all places from Jamaica to Norway to Monte Carlo, the place the magnificent Hôtel Métropole sells a Bond bundle providing customized tailoring, a helicopter tour, and, after all, many martinis—shaken, not stirred.

This article seems within the August/September 2026 situation of Fortune with the headline “A vacation as fabulous as your favorite show.”