The White Lotus is heading to Thailand. What kind of tourism hoopla will follow?

You’ve seen product placement in your favorite TV shows for years. And maybe you’ve even been inspired to travel because of the scenery in the background of a movie you love. But the sheer impact of TV tourism might shock you—and it’s part of a growing trend.

Recently, the Tourism Authority of Thailand announced that season three of The White Lotus will be filmed soon in Bangkok, Phuket, and Ko Samui. While the specific hotel that will serve as the eponymous ‘White Lotus’ resort hasn’t been announced, CNN noted that there’s no availability at the Four Seasons in Koh Samui from early February through late March, which coincides with filming (the hotel chain declined to confirm or deny the rumors).

Seasons one and two were filmed in Four Seasons hotels in Maui, Hawaii, and Taormina, Sicily, respectively, and both received quite a tourism bump as a result. In 2022, fans booked out the Taormina Hotel before it even reopened, and web searches for nearby Italian towns increased by 50 percent, according to Skift.

TV tourism isn’t a new idea. Back in the 1960s, tourists flocked to Salzburg, Austria, after The Sound of Music was released, according to the New York Times. More recently, New Zealand can thank Lord of the Rings for a significant increase in visitation, and Game of Thrones set tourists alight, contributing about USD$195 million in tourism revenue for Croatia between 2013 and 2018, according to a study from the University of Zadar. Northern Ireland, too, estimated about £50 million in tourism revenue in 2018 after scenes for Game of Thrones were filmed there. Just this month, Skift reported that about 80 percent of France’s foreign tourists said they wanted to visit after seeing something filmed in the country. That’s not surprising, considering Emily in Paris has its own official Parisian tour now, complete with a pastry lesson and a masterclass in ‘Le Flirt’.

In the last few years, TV tourism has risen to new levels, though. Filming locations often brand themselves with “as seen on…” signage and marketing. In Northumberland, England, you can visit castles proud of their roles in Harry Potter and Indiana Jones, and in Iceland, you’ll find campervan rental companies capitalizing on Game of Thrones by listing out for you exactly where you should drive to see the real-life places that served as locations in the series.

Many hotels have collaborated with TV and film productions to create suites that allow guests to feel like they’re having an immersive experience straight off the screen. That includes Club Wyndham teaming up with Hallmark Channel for ‘Countdown to Christmas’ suites and The Graduate hotel creating a ‘Stranger Things’ suite in its Bloomington, Indiana, location. Airbnb also regularly offers stunt bookings, such as a Malibu Barbie-inspired mansion kitted out like Ken’s ‘Mojo Dojo Casa House’ from the movie. 

Last year, American Express surveyed people’s travel habits and inspiration and found that 64 percent of respondents had been inspired to travel somewhere after seeing it in a movie or TV show. TV makes an easy sell for tourists, and destinations know this. In 2014, Creative England and Visit England collaborated on a guide to teach local communities how to capitalize on the fame filming sites could bestow upon their communities. That year, they estimated that screen tourism in England alone, excluding London, amounted up to £140 million in tourism revenue.

While it’s too soon to say exactly how much Thailand could benefit from tourism related to The White Lotus specifically, we can guess it will be big. Showrunner Mike White previously considered Japan as a filming site, according to Deadline, and went on a scouting trip to the island nation. Vague details of that scouting expedition were revealed last year in a speech producer Georgina Pope gave at the Tokyo Film Festival, in which she said that Japan’s lack of support for international film production was hindering its expansion. When The White Lotus was debating where to film, Thailand offered an incentive program Japan couldn’t match. They literally got the phone call while they were touring Japan, Pope said. 

“It was a Thai production company informing them that the Thai government had just announced a renewal and improvement on their film incentive system: A 30 percent rebate. For their project [The White Lotus], that meant 4.4 million dollars alone,” she said. “At the time in Japan, we had no incentive in place at all… All I could hear was the sound of a 35-million-dollar project flying out the window.”

Of course, TV tourism also raises other questions—if places are so recognizable that they’re easy to find and visit, should you add to the masses by going yourself? It’s a hard ethical question to answer, especially when it comes to luxury tourism of the type displayed in The White Lotus. In that case, the better question isn’t whether you go, but how.

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