Fans of the hit HBO series The White Lotus may be stampeding to its latest five-star hotel setting — on the Thai island of Koh Samui — but set-jetting goes both ways. This year Britain is also expecting a tidal wave of visitors, buzzing at the thought of its film and TV locations.
Visit Britain, the government body that sells the country as a destination to the rest of the world, forecasts that spending from overseas visitors will reach £33.7 billion during 2025 — a 7 per cent increase over the figure for last year and up from £28.4 billion in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic.
Partly the lure for visitors are locations that have featured in films, TV shows and music videos. As a response Visit Britain is running an advertising campaign celebrating the country’s movie-star credentials, targeting key markets for inbound visitors including France, Australia and the US.
“Starring Great Britain,” does the nation proud with clips from Bridgerton, Harry Potter, Mission Impossible and The Crown. What it doesn’t do, however, is feature the British-based film, TV and social-media output that we might not have seen. Bollywood movies, South Korean Instagram posts, American soccer sitcoms, Taiwanese music videos — in recent years places in the UK have served as backdrops for all these. In some of these spots residents have subsequently found themselves swamped with visitors. Here are six of the most surprising.
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1. Tantallon Castle, East Lothian
Tantallon Castle featured in the 1998 film Kuch Kuch Hota Hai
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Bonkers but brilliant is the only way to describe the Kuch Kuch Hota Hai title track, and while the 1998 Bollywood blockbuster may have been shot primarily in Mauritius and India, it used a medley of Scottish landscapes as the backdrop for this charming song. Three friends pine for each other beside Eilean Donan and Tantallon castles, while simultaneously trying to keep their wind-blown hair out of their eyes. “Almost every day we get visitors who have come because of the film,” Phil Stobie, manager of Tantallon Castle, says (historicenvironment.scot). And who can blame them for posting their tribute acts on social media afterwards? The director, Karan Johar, and his cast turned a gusty Scottish coastline into Bollywood gold.
Where to stay The smart and central No 12 Hotel and Bistro in North Berwick (B&B doubles from £170; no12hotelandbistro.co.uk)
2. Prideaux Place, Cornwall
Prideaux Place is popular with German visitors
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Covid overcrowding, Poldark with his shirt off, celebrity mega-homes in Mawgan Porth — Brits have such a fevered relationship with the far southwest of the country that they’ve barely noticed all the Germans piling in alongside them. The main reason they come is Rosamunde Pilcher. Since 1993 the novelist’s work has been the subject of a staggering 174 German TV adaptations, which have on occasion garnered a quarter of the nation’s total audience. “Just about every country house and clifftop has featured over the years, but Prideaux Place near Padstow is one of the favourites,” says Niall MacDougall, founder of Cornwall DMC, which organises tours for German groups (prideauxplace.co.uk). To which you should add another mansion, Pencarrow (pencarrow.co.uk), which doubled as a Cornish vineyard in Englischer Wein, released in 2011 and featuring a typical mix of rippling muscles, high Teutonic cheekbones and improbably sunny weather; free to view on Youtube.
Where to stay The revamped Harbour Hotel in Padstow (B&B doubles from £135; harbourthotels.co.uk)
• Read our full guide to Cornwall
3. Richmond upon Thames, London
Richmond is the setting for the Apple TV+ hit Ted Lasso
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The presence of American tourists on the streets of Richmond will surprise no one. But the reason that their numbers have surged in recent years is less expected: football. Since 2020 the prettiest riverside London suburb has been the fictional home of AFC Richmond and its fish-out-of-water Texan manager Ted Lasso. And even though the Apple TV+ series named after him has won 13 Emmys, hardly anyone in the UK watches it. So when the first set-jetters showed up and asked the way to AFC Richmond’s Nelson Road ground, few locals had any idea what they were talking about (not least because the stadium featured in the show is Selhurst Park, Crystal Palace’s home, 12 miles east). Since then some things have changed. Guides from the Original Ted Tours reveal key locations, while an official Ted Lasso store sells AFC Richmond kit (tedlassotour.com). One thing remains constant, however: Brits are still not watching the show in big numbers. Premier league football in as-posh-as-pearls Richmond? It makes as much sense this side of the Pond as a Trooping the Colour in a Tesco car park.
Where to stay The recently refurbished Selwyn hotel, five minutes’ walk from Ted Lasso’s favourite pub the Crown & Anchor, aka the Prince’s Head (B&B doubles from £170; theselwyn.com)
4. The Seven Sisters and Beachy Head, East Sussex
The chalk cliffs have featured in a host of shows and adverts
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All sorts of film-makers have been inspired by the chalk cliffs between Seaford and Eastbourne — in a memorable 1996 Blackcurrant Tango TV commercial, a fictional French exchange student called Sebastien was challenged to a boxing match on their edge; in 2011 Top Gear used them as a platform to celebrate the Jaguar E-type’s 50th anniversary. And then, in 2015, the Taiwanese singer Jay Chou released a video of his soulful single What’s Wrong? filmed on the cliffs, and the Seven Sisters scene turned Asian. Chou was followed by the Instagramming South Korean actress Seo Hyo-rim — and suddenly hundreds of fans were catching trains to the south coast to recapture the scene. Now, after a Covid-induced pause, they’re back — or at least the South Koreans are — and staff at the National Trust visitor centre at Birling Gap report that numbers have returned to 2019 levels. Let’s hope that Seo’s followers read the Korean-language safety warnings on the website — a South Korean fell to her death here in 2017.
Where to stay The rustic and highly rated Saltmarsh Farmhouse and Café, within the Seven Sisters Country Park (B&B doubles from £190; saltmarshfarmhouse.co.uk)
5. Durdle Door, Dorset
Durdle Door is on Dorset’s Jurassic coast
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You’ve just arrived on a steep shingle beach in Dorset. What’s the first thing you do? It’s probably not dancing, or building a swing in the shallows. But in 2016 that’s exactly what the cast of the Hindi-language musical Housefull 3 got up to when they performed part of the irresistibly catchy song Pyar Ki there. It unleashed a wave of Bollywood tourism so intense that local authorities put up a sign — in Hindi as well as English — begging visitors not to leave their rubbish behind; only they translated “rubbish” as “unintelligible nonsense”, so maybe you should bring earplugs as well as a bag for litter. Don’t expect to have the beach to yourself. This film-star stretch of coast with its shapely limestone arch will soon also be appearing in the second series of The Sandman, starring Tom Sturridge. For a less-crowded Housefull 3 experience head to Cromer Pier or Bircham Windmill in north Norfolk, as these were Pyar Ki backdrops too.
Where to stay The fresh and feisty Lulworth Cove Inn, which is almost as ’grammable as the coast (B&B doubles from £154; lulworth-coveinn.co.uk)
• 14 of the best hotels in Dorset
6. Bicester Village, Oxfordshire
Bicester Village is home to a host of designer-outlet shops
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Newsflash: Bond Street has just regained the dubious honour of being Europe’s most expensive shopping street. So it’s no wonder that so many overseas visitors head to the designer-outlet shops at the purpose-built Bicester Village instead. Home to big names including Prada, Christian Louboutin, Fendi and Dior, it’s so popular that it even has its own railway station. Before the pandemic it was second only to Buckingham Palace in popularity among Chinese tourists.
Where to stay The boutiquey Lion at Bicester, a short drive from Bicester Village (B&B doubles from £106; thelionbicester.co.uk)
Are there any unlikely tourist attractions in the UK that we’ve missed? Share them in the comments
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