A combination of pandemic binge-watching, lifted travel restrictions and spectacular settings has supercharged set-jetting wanderlust.
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The lakeside village of Hallstatt in Austria is home to around 800 residents. But it receives a staggering 10,000 visitors a day during peak periods.
The throngs of tourists come to photograph the Alpine houses, steep mountain peaks and church steeple that are thought to have inspired scenery in the Disney film Frozen.
Selfie-snapping visitor numbers have become so unmanageable that exasperated residents briefly erected a fence to block the iconic view in 2023.
This trend for visiting destinations that appear in or have inspired TV shows and films has been dubbed set-jetting - and it’s proving problematic.
Many destinations lack the infrastructure or are simply too small to deal with the sudden flood of visitors.
Travelling to the shooting locations of films and TV shows is not new - New Zealand has been drawing ‘Lord of the Rings’ fans since the early 2000s.
But a combination of pandemic binge-watching, lifted travel restrictions and spectacular settings has supercharged this wanderlust.
What is set-jetting?
Set-jetting is a term that has been coined for holidays based on the shooting locations of films or TV series.
It is having a powerful effect on bookings. In 2023, travel search engine Expedia found that streamed movies and TV shows were the top sources of travel inspiration at 44 per cent, far outpacing the influence of social media at 15 per cent.
In the UK, 46 per cent of travellers surveyed considered visiting a destination after seeing it on a show or film on a streaming platform, and 36 per cent had already booked trips.
The hilltop town of Taormina in Sicily has always been a summer hotspot, but it has enjoyed a tourism bonanza recently thanks to the glamorous HBO thriller ‘The White Lotus’, whose second season is set on the Italian island (specifically in the Four Seasons’ San Domenico Palace).
Dashing Regency-era drama ‘Bridgerton’ shone a spotlight on England’s period houses.
One setting was Hampton Court Palace, once the home of King Henry VIII, in the London Borough of Richmond. The Grade I listed building is a majestic mix of Tudor and Baroque architecture with 60 acres of manicured gardens.
Supernatural comedy ‘Wednesday’ led to an uptick in tourism in Romania. Scenes were filmed in the Buftea studios just outside the capital Bucharest, where fans can tour the sets.
Korean dramas (K-dramas) have also sparked tourism trends. Switzerland has seen an uptick in Asian visitors to places such as Interlaken, Grindelwald, and Iseltwald, which featured in the Korean TV show, ‘Crash Landing on You’.
K-drama hit ‘Queen of Tears’, released in 2024, has inspired trips to Berlin and Potsdam in Germany to follow in the footsteps of the show’s honeymooning couple.
Set-jetting sparks overtourism concerns
Set-jetting turns problematic when there is a sudden surge of visitors to an unprepared destination following the release of a TV show or film.
Hallstatt, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has been on-screen famous since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Millions of people visited every year, particularly from East and South East Asia. It was featured on a Korean TV show in 2006 and a replica of the town was built in Huizhou, Guangdong Province, China in 2011.
But numbers skyrocketed after the release of Frozen. The town has had to introduce daily limits on the number of buses and cars that can enter, but it regularly reaches these caps.
Mayor Scheutz told the Austrian press that residents just want to be left alone.
Dubrovnik, although considerably bigger than Hallstatt, is similarly overwhelmed by set-jetters - it was a key filming location for season two of HBO’s epic fantasy drama ‘Game of Thrones’.
The southern Croatian city now ranks top on the list of overtouristed destinations, according to findings by Statista.
The city has a population of just over 41,000 and welcomed almost 1.5 million tourists in 2019. That’s around 36 tourists per resident.
The detrimental effects of these numbers are clear to see. Dubrovnik suffers from traffic jams as tour buses park up outside the Old Town walls; the excessive visitor numbers mean damage to infrastructure, and local residents are being priced out.
The environmental impact of set-jetting tourism
Another prominent case of set-jetting’s dark side is Thailand’s Maya Bay. The coastal spot was featured in Leonardo DiCaprio’s 2000 film The Beach, and immediately drew hordes of tourists.
What was once a pristine, paradisiacal beach was swarmed with visitors who had little respect for the environment.
Such was the damage to the coral reefs from speedboats that authorities chose to close the area to visitors for nearly four years to allow marine life to recover.
It reopened in 2022 with a cap on visitor numbers and a swimming ban.
Will The White Lotus bring overtourism to France?
The fourth series of The White Lotus, expected to be released in late 2026 or early 2027, will be set somewhere in France, stars of the show have revealed.
Given it is likely to use a Four Seasons’ hotel as in previous series, speculation for the filming location is focused on properties in Paris, Megève and the Côte d'Azur.
France was the world’s most visited country in 2024, with over 100 million arrivals recorded.
Some areas are feeling the strain. Residents in one of Paris' most popular tourist neighbourhoods, Montmartre, have recently pushed back against overtourism.
Atop the hill where the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur crowns the city's skyline, they lament what they call the “Disneyfication” of the once-bohemian slice of Paris.
The basilica says it now attracts up to 11 million people a year, even more than the Eiffel Tower, while daily life in the neighbourhood has been overtaken by tuk-tuks, tour groups, photo queues and short-term rentals.
The French Riviera resort of Cannes is imposing what its city council calls “drastic regulation” on cruise ships, halving the number of very large ships allowed in its harbour and capping the daily number of passenger visits at 6,000 starting next year.
The aim is to ban all ships carrying more than 1,300 people by 2030, the city hall said in a statement.
But in general, France has been far less vocal about mass tourism problems than neighbouring countries like Spain or Italy.
A commitment to sustainable tourism, strong infrastructure and a strategy to spread visitors across regions and seasons all play a part.
Unlike many countries now scrambling to rein in mass tourism, France started laying the groundwork years ago.
Atout France, the country’s tourism development agency, has made sustainability a central tenet of its strategy. Under a 10-year roadmap - the Destination France Plan - the government earmarked €1.9 billion in 2021 to encourage greener, more responsible travel.
That means pushing for rail travel over short-haul flights, investing in mid-sized cities and nudging visitors beyond the usual suspects, like Paris or Nice.
The country doubled down this year, with a fresh pledge to invest in tourism that’s more ecological, inclusive and digitally savvy. Tourism leaders hope that investment results in longer stays, smaller crowds and more meaningful experiences.
But it remains to be seen if ‘The White Lotus effect’ will upset this delicate balance.
