Want a White Lotus Vacation or a Ted Lasso Tour? Set Jetting is Trending. Lucy Broadbent Reports.
The San Domenico Palace Hotel in Sicily is filling up for 2023. So too the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea in Hawaii. And you’ll have to fight to get to the bar inside The Prince’s Head pub in Richmond, London for a pint.
Set-jetting or location-vacationing, visiting the places where movies and television shows have been filmed, is on the rise, and shows like The White Lotus and Ted Lasso are fueling the trend, according to The New York Times. A recent GlobalData survey found that television and film are now significant influencers on where people choose to travel to.
“After the White Lotus began airing our hotel experienced a spike in web visits from the US market and the UK and Australia,” says Ilaria Alber-Glanstaeten, director of communications for the five-star luxury resort San Domenico Palace where the second season of White Lotus was filmed.
It’s hardly surprising. The former Dominican monastery overlooking the Ionian Sea with Mount Etna in the background is very obviously spectacular. Just one panned shot of its colonnaded architecture, cliff-top position, palm-shaded terraces, and infinity pool, is a tempting invitation.
The show advertises the kind of sun-kissed lifestyle that most of us dream of. The azure ocean, the linen-clad restaurant tables, the lush tropical gardens of The Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea do exactly the same. They make us want to be there. We might not care for the spoilt, over-indulged, over-privileged characters of the White Lotus show itself, but few of us would object to their vacation packages.
Even at the less luxurious end of the travel market, TV still sells us a lifestyle that we are curious about. British actor Emmy McMorrow set up Ted Lasso Tours in Richmond, London after she was stopped in the street by an American tourist, asking her to snap a photo of him outside The Prince’s Head pub, better known as The Crown and Anchor in the Apple TV+ series.
“The pub is the thing everyone wants to see because it’s the heart of the show,” she explains, adding that she set up her tours after noticing how many Ted Lasso tourists were roaming around her local streets looking for the places where the show had been filmed. Her tours now include Ted’s front door, the site of Keely and Roy’s first date, and even some of the top-secret season three venues.
Such is the interest in the show that she is rarely without customers, and the quaintness of the historic, pretty town of Richmond, on the western edge of London running along the River Thames enchants.
Other top set jetting destinations are New Zealand’s Tongariro National Park, where Lord of the Rings was filmed, Albuqueque, New Mexico where Breaking Bad was filmed and Ireland where much of Game of Thrones was immortalized on film. Set-jetting is here to stay.
For details:
https://www.fourseasons.com/taormina/?seo=google_local_sdh01_
https://www.fourseasons.com/maui/
White Lotus can be viewed on HBO
Ted Lasso can be viewed on Apple TV+
Lucy Broadbent is the author of What Would Ted Lasso Do? How Ted’s Positive Approach Can Help You.
Ted Lasso, seasons 1 and 2 available on Apple TV+. Season 3 due in early 2023.
