Coinciding with the film’s cinema release last summer, the Accor-owned brand embraced the association in an emailed newsletter to customers titled “Orient Express Takes to the Big Screen OE x MI7”.
“The Orient Express teams opened their archive to help reconstruct the perfect replica of our historic train where one of the film’s most adrenaline-fuelled action sequence takes place,” the newsletter stated.
The Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea, where the first season of The White Lotus was filmed, reported a year-on-year 425 per cent increase in traffic to its website when the series first streamed in 2021.
Much of the interest, the resort’s director of marketing, Mark Simon, says, has been for the Oceanfront suites that feature in the show.
“We still get a lot of guests who joke about checking into the Pineapple Suite,” a spokesman for the hotel says, referencing the running plotline about the honeymoon suite that newlyweds Shane and Rachel have been denied because of a double booking.
The couple get to stay in the suite on their last night – with fateful consequences.
“There is no Pineapple Suite; however, the HBO production team redecorated our Lokelani Presidential Suite, which rents for US$29,000 a night. The suite doesn’t have a plunge pool, another question we are frequently asked,” the spokesman adds, alluding to another running joke in the show. But it does include the all-important “private patio”.
San Domenico Palace, Taormina, A Four Seasons Hotel in Taormina, Sicily, has experienced a similar boost after featuring in season two.
“Since the first episode aired at the end of October, we have noticed a big spike in web traffic from English-speaking countries, especially the US, UK and Australia,” a spokesman for the hotel tells me.
“We saw the first season and we were very curious about the second but we didn’t know the plot until it was aired. The only thing we assumed was that it would also have the same humour, typical of Mike White [the show creator].
“We were happy about the way our hotel and the destination were pictured,” the spokesman adds.
“Of course, in the plot there were some dark sides [including a pair of prostitutes running riot through the hotel] but some dramas are necessary. Above all, we are happy about the awareness about Sicily that this series spread.”
It seems impolite to ask whether the hotel has seen an upsurge in ladies of the night trying to get access to its wealthy clientele.
In the episode called Kill List, they and their Waystar Royco management have been forced to join a company retreat.
Kendall whines about the mud on his shoes and his room being small, while Roman quips, “When bears s*** they do it here I think”.
Their saltiness must have rubbed off on their executives, Frank and Karl. The latter’s reaction to seeing rivals relaxing in the glass-fronted sauna overlooking the river and mountains is: “Poor bastards, hanging in the window like Peking duck.”
The Juvet has had the last laugh. “When the episode of Succession aired in April 2023, we had 18,000 unique hits on our website that day and it crashed,” says hotel manager Kristina Slinning.
“We were already pretty much booked up for the summer before the episode aired but we did experience an increase in reservations for the shoulder season, in October and November.”
The hotel had previously featured in Ex Machina as the remote home of a creepy billionaire.
“The Ex Machina movie was a little bit of a turning point for us when it came out in 2015; we saw a big increase in requests and visits, especially from American and British guests,” says Slinning. “We still have guests that come because of Ex Machina, and I would say that we have the same ratio between those that say they come because of that movie and for Succession.”
Other screen appearances have had a less positive effect.
Critics are showing their frustration by spraying graffiti around Place de L’Estrapade, in the Latin Quarter, where Emily Cooper lives.
The “Emily not welcome” sprayed on the shutters of Café de la Nouvelle Mairie, which Emily is seen to frequent with her friend Mindy Chen, is one of the more repeatable comments.
And while fans have flocked to La Boulangerie Moderne to buy pastries like Emily, some have left unfavourable reviews online, prompting the owner’s daughter to say on TikTok: “My father is really hurt by this situation. A lot of people expect to find something out of this world but we are just a very traditional boulangerie. We’re not here to sell you a dream.”
Saltburn, the polarising British film shot at a private country estate in the East Midlands of England, is another production that has upset local residents. Neither the grand house nor grounds where, in the film, an eccentric, privileged family are picked off one by one are open to the public, but that has not stopped fans flocking to find it.
Many film themselves dancing to “Murder On the Dance Floor” in front of the (firmly closed) entrance gates in homage to the movie’s eyebrow-raising ending.
While many of the local residents are fed up of the increased footfall, The Snooty Fox pub, in the nearby village of Lowick, has experienced positive effects, with an uptick in business from the fans.
“We’re seeing a lot of younger people coming to the village pub,” manager Steven Hyare told local newspaper the Northamptonshire Telegraph. “It’s great to see we’ve been able to reach a different demographic to what we would normally do.
“It does put Lowick on the map, whether people like it or not. I don’t know how long it will last, but while it does, let’s embrace it.”