What’s on TV? Maybe a Great Vacation.
Themed itineraries are on the rise, dropping travelers into the middle of their favorite story lines.
WITH 70 PERCENT of Americans watching more TV in 2021 than they did in 2020, binge-watching has skyrocketed during the pandemic. Now, as borders reopen, restrictions ease and travel restarts, tour advisers are fielding an increasingly popular request: immersive, TV-themed itineraries that allow travelers to live out their favorite shows’ story lines.
In Britain, hotels in London have partnered with Netflix to offer Lady Whistledown-themed teas inspired by “Bridgerton” high society. In Yellowstone National Park, travelers are arriving in Wyoming not for a
glimpse of Old Faithful, but for a chance to cosplay as John Dutton from the hit drama “Yellowstone.”
And in South Korea, street food vendors on Jeju Island are anticipating a run on dalgona candy, the honeycomb toffees that played a central role in “Squid Game.”
“When you fall in love with a character, you can’t get it out of your mind,” said Antonina Pattiz, 30, a blogger who last year got hooked on “Outlander,” the steamy, time-traveling drama about Claire Beauchamp, a nurse transported 200 years back in history.
Ms. Pattiz and her husband, William, binge-watched the Starz show together, and planned an “Outlander”-themed trip to Scotland to visit sites from the show, including Midhope Castle, which stands in as Lallybroch, the family home of another character, Jamie Fraser.
Mr. Pattiz is part Scottish, Ms. Pattiz said, and their joint interest in the show kicked off a desire on his part to explore his roots. “You watch the show and you really start to connect with the characters and you just want to know more,” she said.
The fifth season of “Outlander” was available in February 2020, and Starz’s 142 percent increase in new subscribers early in the pandemic has been largely attributed to a jump in locked-down viewers discovering the show. During the ensuing two-year hiatus before Season 6 hit screens — a period of time known by fans as “Droughtlander” — “Outlander”-related attractions in Scotland, like Glencoe, which appears in the show’s opening credits, and the Palace of Holyroodhouse, saw more than 1.7 million visitors. “Outlander”-related content on Visit Scotland’s website generated more than 350,000 page views, ahead of content pegged to the filming there of Harry Potter and James Bond movies.
The Pattizes, who live in New York City, chose a 12-day self-driving sample itinerary
provided by Visit Scotland, winding from Edinburgh to Fife to Glasgow, with stops at
castles and gardens where Claire fell in love and Jamie’s comrades died in battle. Private tour companies, including Nordic Visitor and Inverness Tours, have also unveiled customized tours.
“You watch the show
and you really start to connect with the
characters and you just want to know
more.”
ENDURING TREND, NEW INTENSITY
Screen tourism, which encompasses not just pilgrimages to filming locations but also studio tours and visits to amusement parks like
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, is an enduring trend. Tourists flocked to Salzburg in the 1960s after the release of “The Sound
of Music”; in recent decades, locations like
New Zealand saw a huge bump in visits from “Lord of the Rings” fans, and bus tours in New York City have offered tourists a chance to go on location of “Sex and the City” and “The Marvelous Ms. Maisel.”
But with tourists making up for squandered time, screen tourism is taking on a new intensity, said Rachel Kazez, a Chicago-based mental health therapist.
Ms. Kazez has clients eager to travel — another major trend for 2022 is “going big” — but they are looking for ways to tamp down the anxiety that may accompany those supersized ambitions.
She said her patients increasingly are saying: “‘I was cooped up for a year and I just want to go nuts. Let’s do whatever fantasy we’ve been thinking about.’ ”
“If we’ve been watching a TV show, we know everything about it, and we can go and have a totally immersive experience that’s also extremely predictable,” Ms. Kazez continued.
Cyndi Lam, a pharmacist in Fairfax, Va., has longed to go to Morocco for years. But she didn’t feel confident about doing so until “Inventing Anna,” the nine-episode drama about the sham heiress Anna Delvey, began streaming on Netflix.
In episode six of “Inventing Anna,” the character flies to Marrakesh and stays at La Mamounia, a lavish five-star resort. Ms. Lam and her husband are now booked to stay there in September.
“Everybody can kind of relate to Anna,” Ms. Lam said. “I found her character to be fascinating, and when she went to Morocco, I was like, ‘OK, we’re going to Morocco.’ It sealed the deal.”
Sensing a new desire among guests to tap into the scripted universe, dozens of hotels over the past year have rolled out themed suites inspired by popular shows.
Graduate Hotels has a “Stranger Things”themed suite at its Bloomington, Ind., location, with areas designed like the living room and basement of central characters like the Byers. A blinking alphabet of Christmas lights and Eleven’s favorite Eggo waffles are included.
In December, Club Wyndham teamed up with the Hallmark Channel to design three “Countdown to Christmas”-themed suites where guests could check in and binge Christmas films. They sold out in seven hours.
“It was the first time we’d done anything like this,” Lara Richardson, chief marketing officer for Crown Media Family Networks, said in an email. “One thing we hear over and over from viewers is that, as much they love our products, they want to step inside a ‘Countdown to Christmas’ movie.”
Vacation homes are also going immersive.
For families, Airbnb partnered with BBC to list the Heeler House, a real-world incarnation of the home on the beloved animated series “Bluey,” and Vrbo has 10 rental homes inspired by “Yes Day,” the 2021 Netflix film about parents who remove “no” from their vocabulary.
Celebrities are jumping in, too: Issa Rae, creator and star of HBO’s “Insecure,” ofIn fered an exclusive look at her neighborhood in South Los Angeles in February with a special Airbnb listing, at a rock-bottom price
of $56.
TEA ON TV, IN LONDON AND BOSTON
“Bridgerton,” Netflix’s British period drama about family, love and savage gossip, was
streamed by 82 million households in 2021. (For comparison, the finale of “Breaking Bad” in 2013 had 10.3 million viewers; more recent streaming hits, including “Tiger King” and “Maid,” had fewer than 70million.)
When season two of “Bridgerton” premiered in March, Beaverbrook Town House, a hotel built across two Georgian townhouses in London’s Chelsea, offered a “Bridgerton” experience that included a day out in London and drinks in the British countryside; nearby at the Lanesborough, a Bridgerton-themed tea, cheekily dubbed “the social event of the season,” kicked off the same day.
Boston, the Fairmont Copley Plaza now has a “High Society Package” for fans with flowers and a private afternoon tea.
Contiki, the group travel company for 18to 35-year-olds, had a “Bridgerton”-themed itinerary set for September 2021 but had to scrap it when the Delta variant hit. It has now partnered with Amazon Prime on a Hawaiian Islands trip inspired by “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” set for July.
Both Netflix and Amazon Prime have brand partnership teams that handle collaborations of this nature.
“As we come out of this pandemic, the desire for more immersive experiences is really stronger than ever,” said Adam Armstrong, Contiki’s chief executive. “It’s about getting under the skin of destinations, creating those Instagrammable moments that recreate stuff from films and movies. It’s really a strong focus for us.”
The popularity of “Bridgerton” on Netflix was eclipsed by “Squid Game,” the highstakes South Korean survival drama, and despite that show’s carnage, travelers are booking Squid Game vacations, too.
Remote Lands, an Asia-focused travel agency, reported a 25 percent increase in interest in South Korean travel and created a Seoul guide for fans and a customized itinerary.
Some travel advisers say that some clients don’t even want to explore the locations they’re traveling to. They just want to be there while they continue binge-watching.
Emily Lutz, a travel adviser in Los Angeles, said that more than 20 percent of her total requests over the past few months have been for travel to Yellowstone National Park, a result of the popularity of “Yellowstone,” the western family drama starring Kevin Costner on the Paramount Network and other streaming services.
And not all of Ms. Lutz’s clients are interested in hiking.
“I had a client who wrote me and said, ‘All we want to do is rent a lodge in the mountains, sit in front of the fireplace, and watch episodes of ‘Yellowstone’ — while we’re in Yellowstone,’” she said.