Have you found yourself dabbling with the idea of spending your next vacation at the White Lotus, a luxury resort famous for its obnoxious guests and regular murders?
Welcome to the world of “set-jetting,” in which the settings of popular movies and TVs shows like “The White Lotus” become pilgrimage sites for fans.
The White Lotus resorts are, of course, fictional. But the Four Seasons properties where the HBO series films are real. And after Seasons 1 and 2, which were set in Maui and Sicily, travelers flocked to those properties, and both reported a tenfold increase in bookings, according to Marc Speichert, the executive vice president and chief commercial officer of Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts. A representative said the company was not able to share booking numbers at this time for its resort in Koh Samui, Thailand, where the latest season was set.
How it’s pronounced
/sĕt jĕ-tiŋ/
The term set-jetting — a play on “jet set,” itself coined in the late 1940s — appears to date to a 2007 New York Post article describing the allure of trips inspired by films like “The Queen” (Brocket Hall, near London) and “Pan’s Labyrinth” (the Segovia region of Spain).
The concept behind the term goes back to at least the 1960s, said Daniel L. Spears, an associate professor of hospitality and tourism at the University of North Texas, who has studied the trend. After the 1965 blockbuster “The Sound of Music,” tourism to Austria surged, Dr. Spears said, particularly to Mirabell Garden in Salzburg, the setting for the song “Do-Re-Mi.” And the number of visitors to Hawaii ballooned in the decade after the Elvis Presley romantic comedy “Blue Hawaii” debuted in 1961, Dr. Spears said.
Set-jetting picked up steam in the early 2000s, when the “Lord of the Rings” franchise began to draw large numbers of Shire- and Rivendell-obsessed tourists to New Zealand, and “Game of Thrones” did the same for Iceland and Dubrovnik, Croatia. Since then, the options have exploded.
One of the biggest players in the field, the luxury travel company Black Tomato, offers an array of set-jetting vacations, including adventures that’ll make you feel as if you’re in a “Yellowstone” episode, with horseback riding, river rafting and a fireside dinner with cowboys.
If you fancy a tuxedo and a stiff (and shaken) martini, Black Tomato’s menu of James Bond-themed trips is vast, including a training session with a stunt coordinator who worked on the five latest 007 films, and private access to Aston Martin Works in Buckinghamshire, England.
Travelers are spending big on set-jetting. Black Tomato’s clients typically pay $10,000 to $20,000 per person for a 10-day trip, said Brendan Drewniany, the company’s head of public relations. And about 15 percent of the inquiries the company receives are related to set-jetting, he added, with recent spikes in searches for Hawaii and Thailand.
It’s a long way mentally from the once-idyllic Coco Palms Resort featured in “Blue Hawaii” to the unsettling plot lines of “The White Lotus.” Why are so many people traveling to places — like the Albuquerque of “Breaking Bad” or the English Midlands of “Saltburn” — that are not exactly the stuff of ukulele solos and flower leis?
It might be that the immersive nature of streaming establishes a deep bond with the characters and the place, giving fans a “sense of nostalgia,” Dr. Spears said. “There’s a dark turn, but there’s also an emotional connection.”
