Set, jet, go... to your top screen locations
EVERY week our Holiday Hero NEIL SIMPSON takes an in-depth look at a brilliant holiday topic, doing all the legwork so you don’t have to. This week: TV-inspired travel trends.
ATMOSPHERIC, characterful and certainly dramatic are fast becoming the big selling points for many destinations next year.
But it’s not the jet-set that’s creating this trend – more the ‘set-jet’, holidaymakers heading off to see where their favourite films and television shows were made.
‘When we asked customers about their travel plans, we found more than a third had booked holidays after falling in love with UK and overseas locations seen on screen,’ says Natalie Allard, from Expedia. ‘Even more tell us they plan to do the same next year.’
In recent years the set-jet trend was led by Harry Potter fans zipping around the UK from the platforms of London’s King’s Cross to Northumberland’s Alnwick Castle and Scotland’s Glenfinnan Viaduct.
Now fantasy fans can head to Belfast to visit the just-opened Game Of Thrones Studio Tour to see how key episodes were shot. Two-night mini-breaks in January, with flights, cost from £158pp (lastminute.com). Shuttles to the attraction and entry costs £39.50.
Travel agents say the Netflix show Emily In Paris helped many fall back in love with the French capital, seeking out the boulangerie where Lily Collins’s character buys croissants, the galleries she visits, and more. Eurostar from London plus two nights in a Paris hotel costs from £170pp (eurostar.com).
This autumn, the sunny backdrops of the George Clooney and Julia Roberts romcom Ticket To Paradise have been captivating cinema audiences.
But while the movie is supposedly played out on the Indonesian island of Bali, set-jetters will have to fly a few thousand miles to Australia to recreate scenes which were actually filmed on the white sands of Catseye Beach and in the five-star Qualia resort on Hamilton Island, one of the Whitsunday Islands in Queensland. Get international flights to nearby Brisbane from £1,007 and stay at Qualia from £550 per night (trailfinders.com).
But it’s not just comedies or dramas that attract set-jetters. Actor Stanley Tucci’s food-based BBC2 show Searching For Italy has inspired so much interest from holidaymakers that Expedia has added cooking classes and tastings to its Italian holidays.
One of the most popular shows was Tucci’s exploration of the small plate cuisine, or cicchetti, served in Venetian bars, which can be relived in luxury at canalside Baglioni Hotel Luna alongside St Mark’s Square. From £844pp for three nights, including flights. Add a four-hour Venetian cicchetti cooking class with a local chef for £190.
Or recreate Tucci’s TV magic with a £90 bar-hopping and foodtasting session of five cicchettis paired with five Italian wines that includes a gondola trip across the canal to reach lesser-known local bars (expedia.co.uk).
Closer to home, TV fans can enjoy escorted breaks with guided visits to movie locations in the UK.
On the Call The Midwife tour, an actress in costume leads guests across the cobbles of Chatham Dockyard in Kent, where much of the BBC show is filmed. Holidaymakers can also explore some of the show’s London locations.
Three-day coach tours with two nights in a hotel cost from £219pp (justgoholidays.com).
On a Peaky Blinders break around Chester and Liverpool, immerse yourself in the BBC drama’s underworld with storyboards, props and drinks in an ‘as seen on screen’ bar. Two-day breaks with coach travel, guided walks and hotel stay cost from £99pp (national holidays.com).