Have you seen The White Lotus, the hit HBO streaming show about a group of wealthy Americans at a luxury resort?
It may be the most influential TV series in the history of hotels and hotel marketing and the current season (streaming on JIO in India) will be its most successful ever. The season premiere (of season three) delivered 2.4 million viewers in the US, a huge jump from the 1.5 million who watched the premiere of season two. And season one did not even reach 1 million views.
That’s why the travel and tourism industry is watching the response to the show with so much interest.
But first, assuming you have not watched the show, here’s how it works. Season one was shot in the Four Seasons in Maui in Hawaii and dealt with spoiled rich guests and the harassed staff of the hotel (called The White Lotus in the script) and was written with a little sympathy and a lot of satire.
It was made by Mike White, a writer-director, who took advantage of the pandemic to film the show in a hotel that was very nearly empty. I enjoyed it and so, I imagine, did most of the people who watched it. But at that stage, I don’t think anyone realised what a phenomenon it was set to become.
That only happened in the post-pandemic phase when more people were eager to travel, and so they booked themselves into the Four Seasons resort featured in The White Lotus.
The White Lotus also made all luxury hotels everywhere seem more glamorous and desirable again. I knew, when I saw the response, that something significant was happening though many people argued that it was just revenge tourism that had benefited all hotels. And it was true that in the post-pandemic era people who had been stuck at home for months rushed to enjoy a taste of luxury.
Whatever reason you believed had led to the boom, there were consequences for how hotels marketed themselves. By the time The White Lotus was released, hotel companies had decided that the best way to promote their properties was to pay so-called influencers to post on social media about their hotels.
This made a certain amount of sense. But I had always felt that it was hard to beat fiction (TV, movies or streamers) when it came to public impact. Take the example of India. From the time Udaipur‘s Lake Palace hotel appeared in the Sunil Dutt-starrer Mera Saaya in the 1960s to the Lake Palace’s starring role in the James Bond film Octopussy in the 1980s, part of the legend surrounding that hotel had depended on its portrayal in fictional shows.
Abroad, there are many more examples. Pretty Woman did more for Los Angeles’s Beverly Wilshire hotel than decades of PR had achieved. The Tourist, with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, did wonders for the Danieli hotel in Venice. (Both the Beverly Wilshire and the Danieli are now part of the Four Seasons group but they were not when the movies were made.) In the 1970s, New York’s Plaza hotel gained enormously from the movie Plaza Suite based on the Neil Simon play.
The general view, however, was that in the age of social media all the old rules were dead and that it was hard to beat the impact of an Instagram post or clip on YouTube. However the response that greeted the first season of The White Lotus made hotel marketing people sit up and re-examine their views.
Though it was not by design, I went to the historic San Domenico hotel (now run by The Four Seasons) in Taormina in Italy at just the right time. Like many seasonal European luxury hotels, the San Domenico shuts down in the winter and The White Lotus team had moved into the hotel to make the second season. By the time I went the hotel had reopened and though the shoot was over, the show had not yet been released.
I have written about the San Domenico before. It is one of the most beautiful and luxurious hotels in the world (its only competition in that category in Italy is another Four Seasons, in Florence) and like everybody else who goes there, I fell in love with it at once.
It was not cheap but once I had stayed at the hotel for a couple of days, I told the team that I was sure that I had got a bargain. The San Domenico would look fabulous in the show and rates would shoot up. They were polite but did not necessarily share my optimism.
As it turned out, I was right. The second season of The White Lotus was far better than the first, better directed, better written and better acted. The San Domenico looked stunning. It was exactly as I had predicted. Every rich person in the world tried to book a suite at the San Domenico. Room rates skyrocketed. And you had to book several months in advance to be sure of getting a room.
All this set the stage for season three. Apparently, Mike White went to the Maldives to find a location and decided that the coral Islands on which each hotel is located were too small and one dimensional for his characters and story. He came to India, to the palace hotels and decided that they were too big and intimidating to create the ambience he needed.
Eventually he settled on Thailand. I am a huge fan of Thailand but even I must concede that it has lost the cachet it once had. There is only a small sliver of luxury at the top of the market and the current tourist boom is based mainly on low- and mid-priced tourism.
The White Lotus is all about high-end luxury and fortunately for the Thais, White discovered the Four Seasons Koh Samui, where I have stayed twice and which is, in my view, one of the greatest resorts in the world.
He decided to shoot a few scenes at Anantara hotels on the coast and a Bangkok scene at the venerable Oriental hotel. But most of the action was shot at the Four Seasons Koh Samui, which lacks the San Domenico’s history but makes up for it with beauty and luxury.
By the time you read this, the second episode of the new season will be out. I have only seen the first episode and even though I know the Samui hotel well, I have never seen it look so gorgeous because the camera work is astounding. Thailand itself has never looked so beautiful.
I had told JJ Assi, the general manager of the Four Seasons Koh Samui, that bookings would shoot up once The White Lotus was released. But, in fact, the demand surged much before the release. And as more and more episodes are streamed the bookings will keep rising.
More significant is the way in which all of Thailand is expecting The White Lotus to boost the country’s tourism prospects. The Italians were a little blasé about the Taormina season but for the Thais, The White Lotus is the exactly the sort of breakthrough the country needs to position itself as a luxury destination. Every location and resort in Thailand is poised for The White Lotus effect and judging by how bookings to Thailand are shooting up, it will happen.
All this begs two questions. One: Why has The White Lotus had such a dramatic effect on tourism? Part of the answer is that it is a very good show, skilfully plotted and very well acted and nothing is more influential and impactful than good fiction. But it is also that Mike White has chosen the world’s best hotels and showed them to their best advantage.
And the second question: Can any show like this benefit Indian tourism?
Well, in theory, this is certainly possible. White decided not to shoot in our Palace hotels but it is possible that other directors might take a different view. The problem, of course, is that upmarket tourists find India more problematic than Italy or Thailand. As somebody put it wittily on X, if they set a season in Goa, the plot will be simple. The tourists will fight the taxi mafia and a body will be discovered early in the season!
