Now that the fictional guests of Season 3 of The White Lotus have officially checked out of their sumptuous Thai resort, the country is gearing up for the real tourists to arrive.
The first two seasons of the show, a satirical look at the privileged lives of its wealthy guests and the employees of the eponymous luxury hotel, were filmed at Four Seasons properties in Maui, Hawaii and the Sicilian town of Taormina. Fans then turned those real-life resorts and cities into bucket-list destinations.
For Black Tomato, a luxury travel agency that specializes in "set-jetting" vacations designed around popular movies, that phenomenon has already arrived:
It reported a 44 percent spike in sales to Thailand in the first four months of this year from the same period last year. Prices have also started to creep up about 15 percent from last year, it said.Guests are specifically requesting to book at the properties that Bloomberg first reported were being featured in Season 3: Four Seasons Koh Samui, where an ocean-view villa can cost about US$1,700 (HK$13,260) a night, and the Anantara Mai Khao, where pool villas will set you back about US$400.
Availability at both properties has started to tighten, said Black Tomato cofounder Tom Marchant. Four Seasons Koh Samui has seen a 39 percent increase in bookings from Virtuoso clients.Leading Hotels of the World, a collection of independent, high-end hotels, has also been tracking a spike in interest. It saw customer searches for its six properties in Thailand jump 25 percent the month after it was confirmed that the show was being shot in Thailand - though none of those hotels was connected to the production.
Chompu Marusachot, director of the Tourism Authority of Thailand's New York office, said consumer interest has picked up particularly in and around Koh Samui, Phuket and Bangkok."Appearing in The White Lotus Season 3 allows us to reach a truly global audience," she said.
All this portends a good year ahead for Thailand, which thus far in 2024 has seen foreign visitors jump about 37 percent, to 15.5 million arrivals. Not all of that is attributable to the White Lotus effect.Asia has experienced a slow post-pandemic recovery - but appetite for Thailand and its similarly tourism-dependent neighbors has started to accelerate this year as travelers shift their focus beyond Europe.
Thailand expects to more than double its total foreign arrivals, to nearly 36 million, this calendar year from 2023 - but that rebound will still fall short of 2019's tally of nearly 40 million tourists.Although HBO has kept details of the exact Thailand locales of White Lotus under wraps, the Tourism Authority of Thailand announced that the shoots featured Bangkok, Phuket and Koh Samui.
According to sources on Samui with knowledge of the production, scenes on the island were also shot at the remote Taling Ngam Beach - its white sands sit on the edge of a tropical jungle bordered by palm trees, purportedly offering the best sunset views on the island.Scenes were also shot at Fisherman's Village, a favorite tourist spot known for its lively night market, where walkways are lined with wooden shophouses and rustic buildings.
A slow drip of social media posts featuring the show's actors have offered some hints about filming locations in Bangkok and Phuket. Sam Nivola's Instagram shows fellow castmates Patrick Schwarzenegger and Iris Apatow on a yacht, as well as on a beach with karst cliffs. Google's reverse image search identifies it as Maya Bay on Phi Phi island.Likewise, a recent post by Schwarzenegger's fiancee, Abby Champion, shows the couple posing on what appears to be Banana Beach in Phuket; it already serves as the kind of soft marketing that Thailand's tourism board will benefit from.
Marchant said that after The White Lotus Season 2 aired, Black Tomato's sales to Sicily tripled in 2023. Demand for visits to Taormina, Noto and Palermo have increased since the cities were featured in the show.He said The White Lotus influence has an intangible aspect as well.
"We see film and TV having more of a subliminal influence on destinations, where you may not even be aware you're being influenced and drawn in," he explained.Thailand's tourism ministry understood that power when it announced last year that it would increase a cash rebate for foreign film productions to 20 percent from the start of 2024.
That incentive helped draw HBO's production crew, which could save up to US$4.1 million - the maximum rebate amount - as a result of the policy.With a four-year drop in tourism, Thailand and Koh Samui in particular have some work to do before welcoming the Jennifer Coolidge wannabes.
The island has 150,000 tons of waste that's been piling up because its incinerator isn't working properly, and it faces a water shortage, forcing some hotels to buy water from private companies, forcing residents to go without.Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin has pledged to help Koh Samui cope with at least some of those issues as it braced for a surge in tourism, said Ratchaporn Poolsawadee, president of the Tourism Association of Koh Samui.
Ratchaporn said the tourism industry is beyond excited that the island's attractions will hit screens in millions of homes. He's urging leaders to get Koh Samui ready for the surge."We have to expand roads, improve our waterworks and deal with waste," he said. "We want to give the guests a good experience of Thailand. We have to get ready for them to come."
bloomberg news (tns)
