Fans of The White Lotus are booking stays at hotels where it was filmed

NEW YORK – For some fans of

The White Lotus

, watching the show is not enough. They want the full experience.

In November, Mr Will Potter, an executive at Sotheby’s who lives in New York City, booked a stay at San Domenico Palace, the Four Seasons resort hotel in Taormina, Sicily, where the show’s second season was filmed. “There’re very few shows where, as I’m watching it, I’m going, ‘This is so good,’” Mr Potter, 38, said.

During the first season of the HBO series, which was set in Hawaii, Mr Potter was especially taken with Tanya McQuoid, the bumbling heiress played by American actress

Jennifer Coolidge

, he said.

As he watched the second season with his wife on Sunday nights after they had put their two children to bed, he found himself falling for the show’s idyllic Sicilian setting. Weeks before the murderous finale aired, he had booked a summer family vacation there.

“We were like, ‘This looks amazing to do a full adventure,’” Mr Potter said. “It looks like a beautiful hotel.”

San Domenico Palace, a former Dominican monastery perched on the edge of a promontory overlooking the Ionian Sea, was converted into a hotel in 1896. Its guests have included Irish playwright Oscar Wilde, English writer D.H. Lawrence, Swedish-American actress Greta Garbo, British actress Audrey Hepburn and Italian actress Sophia Loren.

After the second season of The White Lotus began airing in October, the hotel experienced “a spike in Web visits from the US market, as well as those from the UK and Australia”, said Ms Ilaria Alber-Glanstaetten, the resort’s general manager. Some of the suites, priced at US$4,200 (S$5,600) a night, are still available in 2023, she added.

“Bookings have been affected, but the biggest impact has been on awareness,” she said.

Expedia calls the trend of television- and film-related tourism “set-jetting”. Nearly two-thirds of travellers who took part in a recent survey by the online travel giant reported having booked a trip inspired by a movie or TV show, the company said.

The first season

of The White Lotus was filmed at Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea in Hawaii. Like the San Domenico in recent months, that hotel had a spike in reservations in 2021, but it was hard to tell if it was because of the HBO series or because the pandemic lockdown had lifted soon after it aired.

“We strategically wanted to try and reopen after the filming had been done,” Mr Robert Delaney, resort manager at the Four Seasons Maui, said.

He added that many guests ask about the Pineapple Suite, a room that exists only in The White Lotus universe, and the most ardent fans “talk about little intricacies of the characters in the show”. NYTIMES