How the Four Seasons Hit a Marketing Jackpot With HBO’s ‘The White Lotus’
Hotel operator’s risky partnership with a show that features murder and mayhem pays off with rising inquiries and occupancy rates.
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]Some brands would be wary of becoming the site of a grisly murder. But not Four Seasons, one of the world’s most exclusive hotel operators.
Three of its resorts have played starring roles in each of the three seasons of “The White Lotus,” HBO’s twisted take on wealth, class, privilege and five-star hotels. The chain’s properties in Maui, the Sicilian hilltop town of Taormina and the island of Koh Samui in Thailand have served as backdrops for the murder, mayhem and bad manners of the show’s unsavory characters.
Now, the show and hotel operator are officially business partners. Season 3 is the first time White Lotus offered to let the Four Seasons use its fictional brand for the hotel’s own marketing.
Four Seasons hosts White Lotus viewings at five hotels and launches pop-up bars with cocktails inspired by the show. In April, its Westlake Village, Calif., hotel will transform into a White Lotus-style “wellness weekend.”
“The marketing machine is really starting to be put in motion,” said Marc Speichert , chief commercial officer and executive vice president of the Four Seasons.
The partnership between Warner Bros. Discovery’s HBO Max and the Four Seasons is purely serendipitous. When Covid grounded Hollywood production, HBO reached out to producer Mike White to see if he had any ideas for a show that could be shot during the lockdown.
White said yes and began scouting locales that could house a cast and crew for weeks in a bubblelike environment. Initially he tried to find a spot in Australia. But work visas were for eight weeks, not enough time to shoot a show, said David Bernad , an executive producer of “White Lotus.”
Next up was Hawaii, where the challenge was finding a resort that could be taken over by a cast and crew for 13 weeks.
“We ended up at Four Seasons because that was the one hotel that let us shoot there,” said Bernad.
The Four Seasons signed up for season 1 with no knowledge about the show’s plots. There were no finished scripts, only a nondescript first episode, said Bernad.
Even with that uncertainty, the Four Seasons saw a unique opportunity. The luxury hotel was already closed due to the Covid lockdown. Renting out the property to Hollywood was a no-brainer to ride out the pandemic downturn.
“We wouldn’t have gotten any business at the Maui resort during Covid without the show,” said Speichert.
Not everyone would have taken that bet. Without knowing the details of the story line, the Four Seasons risked any number of potential negative brand associations, said Eric Resnick , chief executive of KSL Capital Partners, a private-equity firm that invests in travel and leisure.
“If you were to take one of our hotels and have some terrible misfortune befall the hotel in a mass market movie or TV show, it would give me pause,” said Resnick, whose hotel investment properties have also been featured in movies and TV. “But kudos to Four Seasons as this has been very successful.”
The Four Seasons had a record with these kinds of deals. In 2019, the Four Seasons Hotel Mexico City was featured in the Netflix series “Narcos: Mexico,” a fictionalized chronicle of the Mexican drug trade.
So far, the gamble on the White Lotus has paid off for the legacy hotel chain. Each episode of the White Lotus now acts as a Hollywood-level advertisement for the Four Seasons’ properties.
Four Seasons declined to say how much the HBO series boosted room rates or overall bookings. But it did say that visits to the Four Seasons webpage for the Sicily hotel soared 193% after season two. The Maui property did even better with a nearly threefold rise in web visits. Customer inquiries about available hotel rooms experienced triple-digit percent increases.
New customers are also willing to pay a premium for the White Lotus experience (sans gruesome crime). Occupancy rates in the more expensive multi-bedroom suites that were featured in the show are up 7 percentage points.
To capitalize on this “set-jetting” momentum, the Four Seasons is offering guests a 20-day White Lotus private jet excursion that stops at each of the resorts featured in the show.
For the current season, Bernad said HBO looked at 50 hotels before landing on the Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui. During the Maui shoot in the middle of Covid, cast and crew stayed at the hotel and there was little overlap with civilians.
The next two seasons led to some periods when HBO was shooting at the same time the resorts had guests as well watching the action.
“By now people know who we are,” said Bernad.
“White Lotus” hasn’t decided in what city it will take place next season, and Four Seasons has no guarantee it will play host again, Bernad said.
The Mandarin Oriental is already touting its Bangkok hotel’s cameo in episode 5, which it said “serves as the glamorous backdrop” for the Thailand-based season.
Corrections & Amplifications undefined The Four Seasons will host a “White Lotus”-inspired wellness event at its hotel in Westlake Village, Calif. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the location was West Lake, Calif. Also, David Bernad is an executive producer of “White Lotus.” An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to him as Bernard on subsequent references. (Corrected on March 16)
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A vibrant 1954 Palm Springs home featuring eight colorful murals by late artist Shawn Savage is on the market for $2.295 million. The 2,237-square-foot property features bold hot-pink doors, three bedrooms, a pool, mountain views and playful interiors blending modern glamour with classic Palm Springs style.
3 min
A bold 1950s home in Palm Springs, California, adorned with eight colorful murals by the late artist Shawn Savage, is coming to market ahead of the city’s annual Modernism Week.
The white stucco home on El Camino Way, built in 1954 and recently renovated, has an asking price of $2.295 million. Its staggered facade features three playfully abstract murals on either side of double-height hot pink doors.
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The sellers are Los Angeles-based partners John Freeman and Mathieu Faure, who knew it was “the one” when they saw it after several months of searching in the winter of 2023. “It’s a happy house,” Freeman said. “We really liked the feel of the house: the uniqueness, the openness, the brightness—and the art.”
Located in the Mesa neighborhood of Palm Springs, which backs up to the San Jacinto Mountains, the 2,237-square-foot house features three bedrooms, an angled bonus room and a yard with a pool, desert mountain views and another colorful mural running alongside the pool.
“I never thought in my life I would have a house with pink doors,” said Faure, a producer at Apple TV who is originally from Paris. “It’s so colorful, it’s so different. And so Palm Springs.”
The layout of the home creates a smooth flow from the front doors through the open-plan common area—a foyer, bar, and living and dining room—into the kitchen around a fireplace wall and out to the yard. A corridor leads to a private bedroom wing, where the primary suite has floor-to-ceiling windows and the primary bath is only a tad smaller than the bedroom.
Faure has filled the home with Jonathan Adler furniture, rugs and accessories, riffing on the energetic California vibes of the house to create an aesthetic of “modern American glamour,” he said.
“It was enjoyable for me to play with different types of furniture and make this house ‘happy chic,’ as I describe it,” he said.
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“He did a fantastic job,” said Freeman, who is an attorney and consultant. “It does kind of bring a smile to my face whenever I walk into the house.”
Since the furniture and decor were chosen for the particularities of the space, the couple is open to selling them with the home. Their West Hollywood house is already furnished; the collection doesn’t match the vibes of a Houston loft they bought near family; and Faure can’t imagine these pieces in New York—where he’s lived in the past—he said.
The duo bought the Palm Springs house for $1.925 million in 2024, according to property records, and will list the home Monday. They are represented by Stewart Smith, Patrick Jordan and Kevin Stanley of Bennion Deville Homes/Luxury Portfolio International.
The previous owners had purchased the home in 2021 for $975,000 and then spent more than two years and $700,000 on the renovation, according to Realtor.com. They commissioned Savage, a local Palm Springs artist and painter known for his joyful abstract work, to decorate the home.
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Savage, who died in 2024, lived in the Coachella Valley from 2003, and his work can be found in various local institutions and is on exhibit at the Illumine Gallery in Palm Springs. “Some artists pass through a place. Shawn Savage became a part of it,” the gallery’s description states.
Unsurprisingly, the murals invite lots of friendly conversations, as well as guided tours and interested lookers, but never to a degree that it disturbed the peacefulness of their home or the neighborhood, the sellers said. “It felt like living in an art gallery, and you have the exterior that you would share with the world,” Faure explained.
The neighborhood also played a role in their decision to buy, because of its access to the hiking trails of the San Jacinto Mountains, the lack of through-roads and the neighborly environment.
“It’s a very friendly place,” Faure said.
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