Set-Jetting
What is Set-Jetting?
Set-jetting is the phenomenon of travelling to destinations specifically because of their appearance in popular films, television series, or streaming content. The practice has accelerated enormously with the global reach of streaming platforms: a village appearing in a major series can see visitor numbers double within months of the episode's release, regardless of the location's prior tourism profile.
Famous set-jetting trails include: Game of Thrones locations across Croatia, Iceland, and Northern Ireland; the Outlander effect on Scottish highland tourism; White Lotus destinations (Sicily, Thailand, Hawaii); and Emily in Paris driving record UK visitor numbers to Paris. Tourism boards increasingly collaborate with production companies precisely to trigger the phenomenon, recognising that a well-placed television backdrop reaches a more powerful audience than any conventional advertising campaign.
Example of Set-Jetting
After watching a Nordic noir series filmed entirely in the Faroe Islands, Aiko spent two weeks researching flights. She'd never considered the Faroe Islands before. Three scenes of cliffside landscape had made her want to stand in it. She booked for October, hiked to the spot she'd identified in episode four, and found three other people already there, all doing precisely the same thing for presumably the same reason.