“When the second season of The White Lotus aired—filmed at the Four Seasons San Domenico Palace in Taormina, Sicily—the reaction was immediate, ” says Pierre-Alexandre Francin, a private travel designer with First in Service and a former St. Tropez resident. “The hotel was overwhelmed with booking requests—something like 3,000 in the week after the first episode aired.”
“The third season also boosted Thailand far beyond the property,” he adds. “People wanted to experience the destination for themselves.”
For now, behind the scenes, preparations are quietly underway. Local contacts say production teams have begun searching for accommodation for cast and crew, while luxury cars and other logistics are being lined up in and around Saint-Tropez.
At Nice’s Victorine Studios, a casting call for extras for an unspecified “American series,” published in Nice-Matin, drew a day-long queue of Gen-Z hopefuls—many seemingly unaware of what they were auditioning for.
Wandering through the narrow maze of village streets, I stop at Rondini—the sandal shop where leather Tropéziennes have been crafted since 1927. The patron, Alain Rondini, says he has never even heard of the show and seems faintly amused by the idea that a television series might transform the town.
He leads me upstairs to the atelier—once his grandparents’ apartment—where the smell of freshly cut leather hangs in the air. “Next year the shop turns one hundred,” he says with a smile. “I’m the third generation, and my daughter Anaïs is the fourth.”
“In summer, there are already a lot of people. St. Tropez is a small village—at some point you simply can’t welcome more,” Rondini shrugs. Beside him in the atelier, Anaïs adds: “If it brings people here in the low season, that could actually be a good thing.”
That thought is echoed more than once in conversations around the village. Viviane, whose high-end hippie-chic boutique Blabla has been a treasure trove of Ibiza-style threads and accessories for 45 years, is less interested in the production itself than in what always follows media exposure: curiosity.
