Without warning, the dapper French gentleman groaned like a bullfrog and collapsed on the Bendor Island boat pier in the South of France.
Every season of HBO’s highbrow whodunit The White Lotus begins with a murder. So it somehow felt appropriate that this dockside kerfuffle coincided with the next season of the show being filmed nearby in St.-Tropez and Cannes, for likely release in 2027. The show’s tragicomic plot, it seemed, had spilled down the coast to this rosé-and-retirees village, Bandol.
Thankfully, the man soon sat up, recovered from the episode—but 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 as the crimson flash of ambulances inflamed the blue-and-peach palette of the Côte d’Azur. What character in this story was I playing? I wondered as the coast shrunk away. A snotty travel journalist with existential thoughts on pillow firmness and robe fabrics? Sounds about right.
Film and TV have a way of rewiring our brains and influencing our habits, and nowhere is that felt more relentlessly than in travel. In recent years, TV shows and movies have changed tourism habits around the world. Paddington went to Peru; families followed aboard Belmond’s luxury train, Andean Explorer. Emily in Paris put Paris back in the spotlight. Thanks to another HBO juggernaut, Game of Thrones, Croatia’s Dubrovnik—whose walled old city stood in for King’s Landing—was so thronged by fans of the fantasy show that the government enabled local municipalities to limit cruise and vehicular traffic and restrict alcohol sales.
And the trend is not limited to package tours and niche fandoms; it’s also transforming the luxury travel sector. Once, we jet-setted. Now, it appears, we set-jet.
This phenomenon of traveling to upscale filming locations did not originate with The White Lotus, but the series, whose previous seasons took place in Maui, Sicily, and Thailand, is often held up as its frothiest example. “[The White Lotus] is definitely a conversation that comes up,” says Jessica Eknaian, a Philadelphia-based advisor with the luxe travel agency Fora, who recently planned a $75,000 Thailand trip to the show’s filming hotels for a family of four. “It adds a fantasy element to the vacation,” she says.
After a beat, during which she probably considered the fact that the show has focused largely on the obliviousness of the wealthy, she clarified: “I don’t know that they want to be like these characters.”
For destinations and their tourism industries, set-jetting can be a jackpot. According to a University of Montana report, the neo-Western drama Yellowstone at least partially motivated 2.1 million travelers to visit Montana in 2021, generating more than $730 million in revenue. Tourism in Thailand has risen 300% since the White Lotus treatment, according to Thailand’s Department of International Trade Promotion.
Of course, there have also been unpleasant side effects, including overtourism and price gouging. Some luxury properties in the realm of Game of Thrones, like Hotel Katarina in Croatia’s seafront town of Orebić, have distanced themselves from the series. “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 general manager Olga Krizmanić, delivering a dracarys-tier burn.
Earlier this summer, a client of Eknaian’s staying in Sicily’s Taormina—where these issues have become a real bugaboo following season two of The White Lotus—texted from the beach of her resort a photo of beleaguered tourists sardined into a motorboat with “White Lotus Tours” emblazoned on the side.
Fabulous on-screen locations inspiring cinephiles to travel is nothing new, to be sure. The velocity—and the rise of social media—is what separates the historical set-jetting set off by Roman Holiday and Murder on the Orient Express from the practice as it exists today. “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, founder of a travel-focused communications firm with offices 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 into a four-alarm inferno. But it comes from an understandable desire, says Jimmy Carroll, cofounder of Pelorus Travel, whose journeys include a three-night adventure of drama and deception based on Peacock’s Emmy-winning reality show The Traitors ($157,500 for 12 guests). Set-jetting resonates, he says, “because it allows people to imagine themselves inside the story rather than simply watching it unfold.”
The Traitors, as well as the time-traveling romance Outlander, has led to a rush for sumptuous castle stays in the mythic Scottish Highlands. Fans of the former are so eager to visit Ardross Castle, where The Traitors is filmed—at $7,300 a night, according to the unconfirmed figure circulated online—that the estate’s website advises: “Before you contact us, please note, we have no availability whatsoever for 2026 nor 2027.” Redditors have responded with backdoor directions and satellite maps.
Back on the Côte d’Azur, I was still lost in the White Lotus of it all. And at Zannier Île de Bendor I found a hotel that exudes the history and intrigue befitting a juicy mystery. Established by liquor magnate Paul Ricard in 1950, it was a getaway for Josephine Baker and Salvador Dalí during its heyday. Sailboats, yachts, even the occasional submersible drifted through the turquoise shallows ringing the island, and the guest list during my complimentary stay featured an amusing, Agatha Christie–esque cast: a WASPy couple with a nervy greyhound; a trio of extroverted Australian empty nesters; the fashion influencers Laura and Nicolas Herbert.
Were this an actual season of White Lotus, I thought while reading a magazine at the splendid pool arcing out over the Mediterranean, one of them would not make it.
And just then, a fat bumblebee wandered over from the groves of lavender and oleander and landed on my magazine. I tried to blow it away, but it refused to budge, its sucker probing a Tiffany ad.
It occurred to me, as I blew more forcefully, that I’d never been stung by a bee. I had no reason to think that I’d be allergic. But honestly, wouldn’t that be the greatest plot twist?
Iconic screen destinations that inspired generations of tourists
1942: Casablanca Was this legendary romance filmed in Morocco? Nope. Did that stop travelers from flocking there? Also, nope. Such was the enduring interest in the fictional Rick’s Café, the daughter of an American diplomat opened a real café with that name in 2004.
1953: Roman Holiday The draw of the Eternal City is, well, eternal. But it got an extra boost from the romantic chemistry and comedic timing of Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck, with the city backdrop rendered in stunning black and white. Book the San Pietro Suite at the iconic Hassler Roma, Hepburn’s home during filming.
1977–86: The Love Boat Though primarily filmed on soundstages, this cruise-set series brought Acapulco, Sydney, and other exotic destinations into American living rooms. The Love Boat walked so Below Deck could run.
2000: The Beach Twenty-five years before White Lotus went to Southeast Asia, this desert-island thriller put backpacking culture on the big screen and gave countless viewers their first look at Thailand’s stunning beaches.
2003: Lost in Translation Tokyo plays the third wheel in Sofia Coppola’s Oscar winner. The Park Hyatt, where much of the movie was shot, just reopened after a massive renovation.
Literally Every James Bond Movie, 1962–2021 Few films make travel look as exciting and stylish as Ian Fleming’s 007 adventures, which have been shot everywhere from Jamaica to Norway to Monte Carlo, where the magnificent Hôtel Métropole sells a Bond package offering custom tailoring, a helicopter tour, and, of course, many martinis—shaken, not stirred.
This article appears in the August/September 2026 issue of Fortune with the headline “A vacation as fabulous as your favorite show.”
The post The ‘White Lotus’ effect: How fabulous TV locations are reshaping luxury travel and infuriating locals appeared first on Fortune.
