On Location: Experience The Real-Life Settings of Your Favorite Films and TV Shows

Set-jetting is more than just a cute play on words. It’s a travel concept that lets you visit the real-life settings of some of your favorite movies and television shows. At one time you had to go someplace like Universal Studios in Hollywood to visit your favorite movie and television show sets. While you can still take studio tours (the Warner Bros. Studio Tour in London is the place to go if you are a diehard fan of the Harry Potter franchise), these days there are filming locations all over the world, and the tourism industry makes visiting them in person as easy as buying a plane ticket.

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From a behind-the-scenes look at the set of Survivor in Fiji to touring locations throughout Croatia where Game of Thrones filmed, travelers are interested in both visiting actual sets and simply experiencing the regions just like their favorite movie and television show characters. Opportunities continue to expand as interest in set-jetting grows, especially among millennials and Gen Z. According to research from Expedia, 53 percent of tourists are interested in set-jetting trips, while a whopping 81 percent of millennial and Gen Z travelers plan their vacations based on inspiration from their favorite movies and television shows.

Many states frequently host film companies, including Rhode Island, which served as the setting for numerous movies such as the Hocus Pocus films and shows like HBO’s The Gilded Age, now gearing up for its fourth season. The series, set primarily in New York City, features many scenes filmed in Rhode Island. Head to the city of Warwick to tour Clouds Hill mansion, a living museum still occupied by the original family who built it. You’ll recognize rooms from this incredible property from an episode of the first season of the series.

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Head south to Newport, a city used throughout the series not just as a popular vacation spot for the show’s characters but also as a filming location for many scenes throughout the series. Newport is famous for its Gilded Age mansions, and you can tour homes including Marble House, The Breakers, The Elms and Chateau-sur-Mer, all of which appeared in various episodes. Newport Mansions, the Preservation Society of Newport County, offers guided tours giving visitors an intimate look at many of the filming locations while sharing the interesting histories of the real-life people portrayed in the series.

Philadelphia is home to so many iconic filming sites spanning several decades that Visit Philadelphia compiled a comprehensive guide to cover them all. You don’t have to be a Sylvester Stallone fan to recognize the 72 stone steps leading to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. They still look like they did when Rocky Balboa ran up them in the legendary scene from the 1976 blockbuster Rocky, and people visit daily to follow in his footsteps and celebrate their accomplishment at the top. The online guide includes a detailed collection of maps, addresses and locations for film locations across the city that you’ll recognize from movies such as National Treasure, Shazam! and The Sixth Sense, along with shows like Abbott Elementary, Reacher, Boy Meets World and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, just to name a few.

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Christmas movie fans will want to head to Cleveland to visit a familiar house from a movie that achieved cult-like status among multiple generations of movie fans. The house from A Christmas Story, located in the city’s Tremont neighborhood, hasn’t just been painstakingly preserved to look just like it did inside and out in the iconic film; visitors can step inside for a tour year-round, shop in the gift shop, see memorabilia from the movie in the house’s museum, and even stay overnight in Ralphie Parker’s house or the Bumpus house next door. And, of course, during your visit you’ll want to recite unforgettable lines like, “You’ll shoot your eye out!”

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International film locations offer a great excuse to book a trip, and you won’t find a shortage of options thanks to movies and shows that hop around the globe to different locations for each season. HBO’s The White Lotus has become something of a phenomenon. The show is responsible for drastically increasing travel bookings to Hawai‘i, Italy and Thailand as fans flock to the destinations serving as each season’s setting. Fans fell in love with these destinations without ever setting foot in them thanks to beautiful sets and masterful storytelling. Tour organizers step in to help bring these places to life by doing all the planning for you.

As interest in set-jetting continues to grow year after year, companies such as Unforgettable Travel do not just plan trips around seasons that already dropped; they are also getting ahead of the game and planning trips for upcoming seasons, so they are prepared to handle the sudden uptick in interest once a new season debuts. In addition to White Lotus locations, they organize tours to countries including Italy to see locations from the 2010 film Eat, Pray, Love starring Julia Roberts; Jordan to visit Petra, the UNESCO World Heritage site used as a filming location for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade; and Cambodia to visit the Ta Prohm Temple featured in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.

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The Hawaiian island of Oahu is home to Kualoa Ranch, a family favorite for set-jetting since before set-jetting was even a thing. Hollywood has used this ranch-slash-nature preserve as a movie set since the 1950s, with more than 200 movies and television shows to its credit. Films like Jurassic Park and several of its sequels, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Finding ‘Ohana and Kong: Skull Island all shot scenes at the ranch. There are plenty of ways to see the stunning landscape, like with a zip line or horseback tour, but the Movie Sites and Ranch tours are designed specifically with set-jetting in mind.

You don’t even have to dedicate a full trip to see settings from the big screen — it’s something you can work into other types of visits simply by choosing the right hotel at your destination. When you are visiting New York City, for example, book your stay at Waldorf Astoria New York, which appeared in scenes from The Devil Wears Prada 2. If you plan to spend time in the Catskills, are a fan of the Netflix series The Four Seasons and enjoy quiet getaways at boutique hotels, you’ll want to stay at Blue Fox Motel, a 1950s motel-style property used for parts of Season 2. (Hint: It’s where the friends holed up to wait out a manhunt for a naked killer on the loose.)

Tokyo remains a perennial favorite for travelers; and if you are planning any time in Tokyo, book a room at Park Hyatt Tokyo, home to the 2003 Sofia Coppola film Lost in Translation starring Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray. Although it’s been more than 20 years since the film’s release, the property still receives guests looking to eat at the New York Grill and the New York Bar on the 52nd floor, where many scenes were filmed, offering a breathtaking view of the city spread out below.

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The cookie-cutter studio tours of the past gave us heavily manufactured experiences that felt packaged and lacking in authenticity, but they did help pave the way for this new era of set-jetting. As this new trend continues to evolve and the travel industry creates opportunities to pair exploring new destinations with bringing scenes from the big screen to life, it will be exciting to see how the entertainment and travel industries come together to keep up with the growing demand.