White Lotus Sicily. Emily's Paris. The Mamma Mia islands. Gladiator's deserts. The places that pull you in on screen are real, and they're more extraordinary in person. Here's how I build the trip without the drama or the crowds.

I'm going to tell you something I've watched happen over and over in the last two years. A client finishes a series, sits with that ache of not wanting it to end, and within a week she's in my inbox writing some version of the same sentence: “I think I need to actually go there.”

That feeling has a name now. Set-jetting, choosing where to travel based on what you saw on screen, has quietly become one of the most powerful reasons people book a trip. A single season of television can send a whole region's bookings soaring. And honestly, I love it, because behind every one of those requests is a real human longing: to step inside a world that moved you, to feel the light and the salt air and the stone the camera only hinted at.

What screen tourism gets wrong, though, is the part that comes after the inspiration. People show up to the famous spot at the worst possible hour, in the densest possible crowd, and leave a little deflated. That gap, between the cinematic version and the tour-bus reality, is exactly where I come in. My job is to give you the feeling the show gave you, with the beauty turned all the way up and the chaos turned all the way down.

So let me take you through the moments my clients are asking for right now, and what it actually looks like when I design them for you.

White lotus checks in: Sicily, Thailand, and now Paris

There may be no better example of set-jetting in action than this one show. When it landed in Taormina, my Sicily requests went up. The next season did the same thing for Thailand. And now that the story is moving to Paris, I'm already fielding the first wave of “can we do that one, too.”

Here's what I tell every client who comes to me with that spark. The Ionian terraces, the baroque streets of Noto and Modica, the granita you eat at nine in the morning because that's simply how it's done: all of it is real, and all of it is even more seductive in person.

What you don't want is to inherit the on-screen drama along with the scenery. So I build the Sicily that the show sells without the part where everyone is fighting over the same view at the same time. Private access in the quiet hours. A driver who knows which coastal road to take when the main one clogs. The version of Taormina that feels like it's yours.

Paris, the main character

For an entirely different generation of travelers, Paris became a character all its own through a certain streaming series about an American finding her footing in the city. The plot is breezy. The Paris it shows you, the meet-cute on a cobbled corner, the morning pastry that somehow tastes like the start of a new life, is pure fantasy, and that's the point.

I can craft that fantasy at any age. A grandmother and a granddaughter walking the same bridges. A couple recreating the corner cafe moment with a reservation I made weeks ahead so there's no line and no scramble. Where you base yourself in Paris shapes everything about how the city feels, which is exactly why I wrote a whole love letter to getting the Paris address right. Get the rhythm of your days right, and Paris stops being a place you photograph and becomes a place you actually live in for a week.

Mamma Mia, one more time

My clients have seen this one a hundred times. They can sing every word. And most of them still don't know that the dreamy, sun-drunk islands they fell for aren't the crowded names everyone rushes to. The cinematic feel, the whitewashed chapels on the hill, the turquoise coves you reach by boat, lives beautifully on Skopelos and Skiathos, two Sporades islands that deliver the whole fantasy without the cruise-ship swell.

This is the kind of thing I exist to tell you. I can put you on a Greece itinerary that trades the obvious for the magical: a private caique to a beach you'll have mostly to yourselves, a long taverna lunch where the owner already knows you're coming, the cliffside chapel at the hour the day-trippers have gone. Same feeling that made you press play again. None of the elbows.

Walk like the gladiators

Some scenes are carved into us. The roar inside the Colosseum. The sweep of an empire across the sand. What most people don't realize is how many of those epic frames were stitched together from places you can actually stand in, and how gorgeously they combine into a single journey.

Rome's Colosseum is the obvious one, and I'll get you inside with the kind of after-hours access that turns a monument into a moment. But the desert empire you remember was often somewhere else entirely. The honey-colored fortress of Malta has doubled for ancient Rome more times than I can count. And the dunes outside Ouarzazate in Morocco are where the cameras went for Lawrence of Arabia, The Mummy, and a long lineage of sweeping desert epics. Stand where those scenes were shot and you understand instantly why directors keep coming back. I can thread these together into one extraordinary arc, the eternal city, the island fortress, the cinematic desert, each one earning its place.

Game of Thrones, still

Yes, still. People cannot stop rewatching it, and the requests have never really slowed. The good news is that the locations are some of the most dramatic on earth, and they hold up without a single special effect.

Mdina in Malta was a King's Landing before King's Landing had a name, a walled silent city you can wander after dark when the day crowds thin. The Dubrovnik city walls are so instantly recognizable that the first time you walk them, you'll catch yourself narrating the scenes out loud. And for the brutal, beautiful winter of the far North, there's the raw remoteness of Iceland, all black sand and blue ice.

What makes these trips sing isn't just standing in the spot. It's the guide beside you who worked the productions, who knows which alley was which scene and has the behind-the-scenes stories no plaque will ever tell you.

Outlander and the pull of the Highlands

Few shows have sent people to Scotland the way this one has. The standing stones, the brooding castles, the mist coming off the glen at first light: Outlander turned the Highlands into a character you ache to reach out and touch. And the locations are gloriously real. The medieval keep of Doune Castle, the cobbled lanes of Culross, the vast green silence of Glencoe.

Here's a secret: this is the show that started it all for me. A few years back I got it into my head that I simply had to see where Outlander was filmed, so I called my best friend, the two of us began sketching a route through the Highlands, and before long eighteen other women had asked to come along. That trip became the very first of my women-only tours. So when I tell you a single story can change the shape of your life, I promise I'm speaking from experience.

When women come to me having fallen for that world, I send them somewhere most itineraries skip. A Scotland itinerary built around standing stones at dawn, a private dram in a Highland distillery, and a castle stay with the fire already lit. And for those who'd rather travel with kindred spirits, there's my Hidden Scotland trip, designed for women who want all the romance and none of the planning.

Bridgerton and Downton Abbey: England at full sparkle

If your taste runs to corsets and candlelight rather than swords, England is your set. Downton Abbey gave us Highclere Castle, all soaring towers and clipped lawns, and you can walk its grand rooms just as the Crawleys did. Bridgerton draped its Regency fantasy over the honey-stone crescents of Bath, the ballrooms and townhouse facades of London, and the impossibly pretty villages of the Cotswolds.

This is the England I love designing. A private morning at the great house before the gates open, afternoon tea in a Cotswolds village that looks scripted, a turn through Bath where the architecture does all the romance for you. I can shape it as an England itinerary for a couple or a family. Or you can step straight into that world on my Castles and Gardens tour, a women-only journey through exactly this storybook England.

And this is only the start of the list. Wherever the scene that moved you was filmed, the odds are good that I have a partner on the ground who can turn it into the trip of your life.

Loved it on screen? Let's build it for real.

Tell me the show, the film, or the single frame you can't stop thinking about, and I'll design the trip around it: the access, the timing, the guides who know the real stories.

This is exactly what my custom trip planning is built for.

Reach me at anna@oleganatravelboutique.com or book a call and let's turn your watch list into a packing list.

“Once we found Anna, all we had to do was enjoy!”

Naomi G., on planning with Olegana

When to go

Set-jetting destinations reward good timing more than almost any other kind of travel, because the famous spots are famous, and timing is how we stay a step ahead of the crowd.

For Sicily and the Greek islands, I love late spring and early fall. May and June give you warm water and long gold evenings before the August surge, and September into early October feels like the islands exhaling. Paris is loveliest in shoulder season too, April to June or September to October, when the cafes spill back onto the sidewalks and the light does that thing it only does there.

Malta holds its charm nearly year-round, though I steer families toward spring and fall to dodge the high-summer heat. Iceland splits cleanly: summer for the green, the puffins, and the midnight sun, winter for the black-and-white starkness and the chance at the northern lights. Scotland is at its most cinematic from late spring through early autumn, May to September, when the glens are green and the light lingers late into the evening.

England's great houses and gardens are loveliest from spring into early summer, when the borders are in full bloom and the Cotswolds look exactly the way the camera promised.

Sample itinerary: a Mediterranean screen-to-scene week

Here's what one of these trips actually looks like when I shape it. This is a seven-night Sicily and Malta route, two of the most filmed corners of the Mediterranean, designed so the iconic moments land without the crowds.

**Nights one through three, eastern Sicily.**

You settle into a clifftop property above the Ionian Sea, all terraces and bougainvillea and that endless blue. A private morning in Taormina before the day-trippers arrive. An afternoon drifting through the baroque streets of Noto and Modica, with a granita stop that ruins all other breakfasts for you. One evening, a long dinner on a terrace where the only sound is the sea.
*Photo©: Olegana Travel Boutique*

**Night four, the crossing and a quiet coast.**

A relaxed transfer day with a slower stretch of Sicilian coastline, a seaside lunch, and an easy hop toward Malta. No rush, no airport sprint. Just the pleasure of moving through the landscape.
*Photo©: Olegana Travel Boutique*

**Nights five through seven, Malta.**

A characterful harbor-view stay becomes your base for the island's screen legends. The silent walled city of Mdina after dark, when it belongs to almost no one. The honey-stone fortress that has stood in for ancient Rome again and again, walked with a guide who knows every frame. A farewell dinner overlooking the water, the kind of evening that makes the trip feel like a film of your own.
*Photo©: Olegana Travel Boutique*

Throughout, the properties are chosen for character and location rather than name, the transfers are private, and the access is arranged long before you arrive. That's the difference between visiting a filming location and actually inhabiting it.

Who this trip is for

**Couples chasing a feeling.**

If you watched something together and turned to each other and said “we have to,” this is your trip. I build in the meet-cute moments, the private corners, the reservations that mean you never wait in a line.
*Photo©: Olegana Travel Boutique*

**Multigenerational families.**

A film can be the rare thing the whole family loves at once. I design these so the grandmother, the teenager, and the in-between all get their version of the magic, at a pace that works for everyone.
*Photo©: Olegana Travel Boutique*

**The fans who know every scene.**

If you can quote it line for line, you'll adore the guides I pair you with: the people who worked the productions and carry the stories no guidebook prints.
*Photo©: Olegana Travel Boutique*

**Women traveling together.**

Some of the most joyful versions of these journeys happen in a small group of women who fell for the same show. That's the heart of my women's group tours, and a cinematic theme makes for an unforgettable one.
*Photo©: Olegana Travel Boutique*

Connecting destinations

The beauty of set-jetting is how naturally these places link into something larger. Sicily pairs effortlessly with Malta, as you saw above, and both connect onward to the Italian mainland for a Rome and Colosseum chapter. The Greek Sporades flow into the Cyclades or up to the mainland for those who want more time. Dubrovnik sits a short drive from Montenegro's fjord-like bay and the Croatian islands beyond. And the Moroccan desert pairs with the imperial cities and the coast for travelers who want the full sweep of the country. Scotland and England flow into each other beautifully, with London as the natural hub for both.

Tell me the scenes that move you, and I'll find the thread that ties them into one seamless journey.

Why work with a luxury travel advisor

You can find a filming location on the internet in about four seconds. What you can't find is the after-hours access, the guide who actually worked the production, the timing that puts you in the famous frame when no one else is there. That's the whole game with set-jetting, and it's the entire reason this kind of trip is worth designing rather than improvising.

I've spent years building relationships with partners on the ground in exactly these places. They're the people who can open a door before opening hours, who know which boat captain takes the quiet route, who can tell you the story behind the scene because they were standing there when it was shot. When you plan with me, you're not buying a destination. You're borrowing a network it took years to build, so that the trip feels less like sightseeing and more like stepping into the world you came for. If you've ever wondered what that difference looks like in practice, my approach to white-glove planning is the short answer.

**Anna Fishman,** *the visionary and soulful force behind Olegana Travel Boutique, orchestrates transformative journeys where meticulously curated adventures meet authentic connection and exquisite, bespoke exploration.*

Let's turn your watch list into a packing list

If you've finished a series and felt that pull, the one that says go there, I'd love to help you actually go. Tell me the show, the film, or the single frame you can't stop thinking about, and I'll design the trip around it: the access, the timing, the guides who carry the real stories.

Reach me directly at anna@oleganatravelboutique.com or call (917) 345-5792.

You can also book a planning call and we'll start sketching the journey together. Beauty turned all the way up. Drama turned all the way down.

FAQ

Set-jetting is choosing a trip based on a film or TV show you loved, then traveling to the real places where it was set or filmed. It's become one of the biggest drivers of travel decisions, and it's a wonderful starting point. My role is to turn that spark into a trip that actually feels the way the screen made you feel.
In most cases, yes, and that's exactly where my partners earn their keep. Many of these sites are public places you can simply visit, but the experience changes completely with after-hours access, a private entry, or a guide who worked the production. That's the layer I add.
They can be, which is the single biggest reason to plan rather than wing it. My whole method is built around timing and access: the early hours, the quiet seasons, the routes the crowds don't take. You get the iconic moment without the crush.
Absolutely, and it's often the most magical way to do it. Sicily and Malta, Rome and the Moroccan desert, Scotland and England, the Croatian and Montenegrin coast: these link together beautifully. Tell me your favorite scenes and I'll design a route that threads them into one seamless journey.
It's one of the best. A beloved film is often the rare thing everyone in a family loves at once. I design these so every generation gets its own version of the magic, at a pace that works for the whole group.
It depends on the destination, but for most of these Mediterranean and island locations, late spring and early fall give you the beauty with thinner crowds. Iceland and the Scottish Highlands have their own rhythms. I'll match the timing to the specific scenes on your list.

Set-Jetting: how to travel to the TV and film locations you can't stop watching