Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat, a Four Seasons Hotel, South of France
Sarah James, our deputy digital director over at Condé Nast Traveller UK, may have hit the nail on the head when she predicted-slash-recommended Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat, a Four Seasons Hotel, South of France as the locale for season four of The White Lotus. This venerable institution is not far from Nice nor Monaco—imagine the day trips—as well as the coastal village of Beaulieu-sur-Mer. James wrote, “I’m imagining the eclectic, wealthy characters sipping frosty rosé while shooting daggers at each other, butting heads over long, snoozy lunches in the grounds, and flouncing around nearby well-heeled town Beaulieu-sur-Mer.” It’s a great fit with what we’ve seen before—which is precisely why it may not actually make the cut. Those waves may be crashing just a little too close by.
Four Seasons Hotel Megève
Many people, online as well as on our staff, feel strongly that the time has come for a ski season of The White Lotus to contrast the beaches and scorching climes we’ve enjoyed heretofore. While our staffers had eyes on the Four Seasons in such wintry locales as Gstaad, Switzerland (where a Four Seasons is due to open early next year) and Jackson Hole, Four Seasons Hotel Megève presents a French opportunity for a season’s worth of snowy weather and icy behavior. Stay with me: a daffy woman in a fur-hooded Moncler ski suit signs up for lessons to get close to the handsome instructor; a difficult party arrives in a snowstorm only to discover the luggage containing their cold weather clothing has vanished; the manager fields complaints that it’s too cold outside. If you’ve seen Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure, in which a husband abandons his family in the face of a controlled avalanche, you know the potential for drama is endless here. White is on the record saying he hates the cold, but we have hope that he can brave it.
Four Seasons Hotel George V, Paris
Sending us to the heart of bustling Paris would be another (welcome) departure from The White Lotus we know, although I’d point out that much of the show’s drama is leeched from its characters’ listlessness when faced with a resort’s endless leisure time. Is a city environment simply too stimulating? There’s only one way to find out. Paris is a hotel city—there’s no shortage of good ones—but the Hotel George V is the creme de la creme. And in a city that’s so romanticized, it would be refreshing to see some wealthy visitors run into some humiliating circumstances. Perhaps Emily could make a cameo, whenever she decides to come back from Rome.
What about hotels outside the Four Seasons portfolio?
While it’s doubtful that anyone involved in the relationship between The White Lotus and the Four Seasons wants it to come anywhere close to it ending, their partnership is only exclusive with regard to marketing, per Deadline. Prior seasons have used other hotels, in addition to the Four Seasons properties, as filming locations. Last season, for instance, shot at the restaurant at the Rosewood Phuket and the courtyard spa at Anantara Mai Khao Resort. Assuming the production similarly incorporates non-Four Seasons properties this time around, which ones might make the most sense?