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The White Lotus Hotels: Wonderful Rooms, Terrible Guests

Four seasons of bad behaviour, five very good hotels. Where the series was really filmed, and which one suits the holiday you want.

Marta Diaz By Marta Diaz · CEO & Editor-in-Chief
· 4 min read
The White Lotus Hotels: Wonderful Rooms, Terrible Guests

There is a moment in every episode of The White Lotus when you stop listening to the argument and start looking at the terrace. Someone is behaving appallingly over breakfast; you are wondering what the room costs. Mike White has made luxury holidays look psychologically ruinous and geographically irresistible, which leaves the sensible traveller one conclusion: keep the hotel, change the company.

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Season 1: Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea

Hawaii

Season 1: Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea
Where it began: a honeymoon, a disputed suite, and a hotel manager having the worst week of his career. The real resort is calmer. It sits on Wailea Beach with the Pacific doing most of the entertaining, and the day arranges itself around swimming, snorkelling and deciding when to do both again. Choose it if your ideal holiday involves repeating yesterday. By day three you stop noticing who has just checked in, which is the point.
02

Season 2: San Domenico Palace, Taormina

Sicily

Season 2: San Domenico Palace, Taormina
A fourteenth-century convent that became a grand hotel, a character arc Mike White would admire. It stands on a cliff above the Ionian Sea, with Italian gardens and an infinity pool at the edge. Note that this is a hotel above the coast, not on the sand. You come for the town, the architecture and the pleasure of dressing for dinner. The sea is the view, not the itinerary.
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Season 3: Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui

Thailand

Season 3: Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui
Here the villas are the star: each with its own pool, set into a hillside of coconut palms. It poses the only question that matters on holiday, which is whether to go out or stay exactly where you are. Most guests arrive with a list of filming locations and abandon it by the second afternoon. A private pool is very good at cancelling plans. (Television cheats, incidentally: the bar belongs to another resort altogether.)
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Season 4: Airelles Château de la Messardière & Hôtel Martinez

The French Riviera

Season 4: Airelles Château de la Messardière & Hôtel Martinez
Next, France. HBO has confirmed Château de la Messardière in Saint-Tropez as the "White Lotus du Cap" and Hôtel Martinez in Cannes as the "White Lotus Cannes", with the story set during the film festival. A series obsessed with being seen has found its natural home. One caution for the literal-minded: the White Lotus du Cap is not the real Hôtel du Cap. Book before the first episode airs and everyone has the same idea.

The series is very good at making us want someone else's holiday. The trick is to take it, and choose better company.

Marta Diaz
Written by Marta Diaz · CEO & Editor-in-Chief

Avid tennis player, photographer and traveller. She curates every hotel in the collection and writes The Edit.

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Koh Samui, Thailand Four Seasons Koh Samui

Set on a steep hillside above Laem Yai bay at Koh Samui's north-west tip, Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui scatters private pool…

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Cannes, France Hotel Martinez

Hotel Martinez stands as a grand contemporary icon on the Croisette, embodying the sophisticated allure of Cannes.

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