We’re more than halfway through season 3 of HBO’s hit drama White Lotus. Although I was only a casual fan for season 1 and 2, when I heard the social satire selected Thailand as its new backdrop and that Blackpink’s Lisa would be starring in it, I knew I’d morph into a studious viewer.

The show, which skewers the dysfunctions of the rich gallivanting about on vacation, descended upon Maui and Italy’s Taormina previously. It thrust the filming locations into the spotlight pumping in tourist dollars as fans tried to recreate the show’s opulent lifestyle—something known as “The White Lotus Effect”.

Season 2 in Italy, for example, was estimated by Oxford Economics to have added over 38 million euros to Italy’s GDP in 2022. It calculated that “for every 1 million euros that the production’s own activities contributed to the economy, its expenditure supported a further 3.8 million euros across Italy along its supply chain and through the payment of wages.”

It’s the kind of win that Thailand could use right now. World renowned for its hospitality, Thailand was hard-hit by covid-19. The lack of international tourism (which contributes 12% of its GDP and over 20% of employment) pushed the country into a recession during the pandemic.

“After that the tourism wasn’t the same,” said the designer Marie France Van Damme, who has several of her high-end resort wear pieces featured in this season, including a $1,500 caftan on actress Leslie Bibb. “Today, if you want to go to the Mandarin Oriental [Bangkok], you’ll find rooms at Christmas and New Year's, which would have never happened before.”

The country has been on the recovery path. In 2024, Thai GDP grew 2.7% but tourism and spending has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. For 2025, it set a target to attract a record 40 million tourists, up from the 35 million it welcomed in 2024, and a million more than it received in 2019.

For Season 3, the White Lotus showrunners have selected a lust-worthy of a destination as they come—chicanery unfolds on the island of Koh Samui against a backdrop of crystal cyan waters and jutting granite rock formations. Plenty of brands signed up to collaborate: H&M, Bloomingdales, Banana Republic, Supergoop, Away, CB2 and more. And Season 3 metrics indicate the show is a success. It is averaging 12.2 million viewers per episode, a 78% increase from the performance of Season 2 in the same timeframe, The Wrap reported.

But there’s only middling expectations.

Tan Sawaddichai, the founder of Future Treasure, a multi-brand retail project that promotes Thai fashion internationally, just recently hosted “One Night in Bangkok”. The runway show consisted of emerging Thai designers and closed out NYFW, timed to coincide with the interest in White Lotus.

But Sawaddichai wasn’t expecting magic. “To be honest with you, I don't think the fashion perspective in this series shines enough for my country,” he said. “But at some point, I think the people who watch can feel the vibe of Thailand, the culture, architecture, or understand the fashion is totally different from others in terms of the fabric and the colorways that my country always uses.”

Nichapat Suphap, founder of Venture Management, which represents several Thai celebrities including the actress Praya Lundberg who is in the series, thinks any uplift in spending is going to be minimal.

“Mostly people who watch White Lotus are American,” Suphap said. There isn’t much delta for other nationalities to increase their visitation or expenditure, she felt. “For us, Europeans always come and Australians always come because their flight is around 9 or 12 hours. Thailand is already a destination for them.”

Historically, Americans have visited Thailand less because of the distance. They may be more interested in going after this season of White Lotus—whether they can is another question. They would have to deal with a rough time zone change—not insurmountable as Americans have shown a lot of willingness to travel to Japan ever since the yen dropped. But those two nations are served by numerous direct flights. Not so for Thailand. Getting from either New York or Los Angeles to Bangkok is about a 21-hour journey with a stopover.

“From the US, it's a day [of traveling] and they have what, two weeks of vacation a year? And they can't take the whole two weeks all together so they go to Caribbean,” Suphap said. ” While she thinks the specific hotel—in this case the Four Season Koh Samui—will get a boost, she doesn’t foresee a big lift in tourism or spending.

She also thinks the overall impact of White Lotus is just a lot more limited than a show like Squid Game. It doesn’t propel actors to the global stage, unlike Netflix’s biggest hit, and the connection to Korea in that series was much more direct. It not only took place in Korea, it showcased Korean childhood games, and the cast was all Korean. “This is just a location in Thailand,” she said.

Chinese Are No Go

The biggest Achilles Heel, though, is actually how the Chinese feel about Thailand as they are the top source of international visitors. Their numbers have taken a big dive recently due to the country’s notoriety as a hotbed for kidnapping and online scams.

The NYT’s Southeast Asia correspondent Hannah Beech explains it best: “Following a military coup in Myanmar in 2021 and an ensuing civil war, the country’s border with Thailand has exploded into one of the most lawless and lucrative places on earth. Chinese criminal syndicates have moved in, making deals with rival factions to turn rainforests into high-rise settlements dedicated to online fraud.”

Once trafficked, Chinese gangs coerce them to “engage in crypto-fraud, online dating deception, TikTok shopping swindles, WhatsApp real estate dodges, Instagram deep fakes and Facebook trickery. Confined to these compounds, the scammers, many of whom are Chinese, have been beaten, subjected to electric shock and tied up for hours in a pose that mimics crucifixion, people who were witnesses to or victims of the abuse said. Another form of torture involves crawling on gravel, until knees and hands bleed.”

Disturbing reports have existed for years casting fears into the Chinese populace—there was even the 2023 Chinese film “No More Bets” which tells a fictionalized tale of a couple that was trafficked into Southeast Asia. But it was the disappearance and subsequent rescue of Wang Xing, a Chinese actor, at the start of the year that really outraged the nation, prompting a fallout.

Hong Kong popstar Eason Chan canceled his sold-out February concert in Bangkok due to “safety concerns” for Chinese travelers to Thailand. The country’s tourism authority reported that around 10,000 Chinese tourists canceled their visits in the immediate aftermath. Thai carrier Lion Air reported a 20% drop in bookings over Chinese New Year after the abduction.

Thailand nixed its visa requirement for Chinese citizens a little more than a year ago, but public perception is unlikely to turn around while the fraud centers in the region continue to flourish. Junjie Wang, a former Vogue Business China editor who authors the China Retail Watch newsletter, said that instead: "Chinese tourists are going to Japan or Europe—or if Southeast Asia then Bali.”

Wang also observed that the series’ addition of Blackpink’s Lisa, who has over 105 million followers, won’t do much to boost viewership in China. Although her joining the cast was an effective way to introduce a wider, more Asian fan base to White Lotus, “ever since Lisa performed in Paris at Crazy Horse [cabaret], her reputation and image in China turned negative and she got a lot of criticism,” he shared.

Her latest album, released at the end of February, won’t do her any favors in China either. In the single “FUTW” (short for “f**** up the world”), Lisa plays a bloodied mental asylum patient—again not something that will resonate well in a socially prudish nation where censors also try to deter vaguely-defined “morally hazardous” content.

It’s worth pointing out that the initial wave of Chinese tourism to Thailand came about because of entertainment. The movie Lost in Thailand hit theater screens in 2012, becoming the highest grossing movie in China up until that point, piquing Chinese travelers’ interest. Entertainment has an undeniable power to reshape travel and spending. Unfortunately, the White Lotus is not the silver bullet to fix that.

What Else Is On My Mind

• The big news is that Demna Gvasalia—who gave Balenciaga its streetwear makeover—is taking over Gucci. If there ever was a time for this emoji: 😬. Shares of Kering slid 12% on the announcement.

• Fashion’s designer musical chairs slows for no one. Jonathan Anderson is leaving Loewe. Donatella is indeed departing Versace. Haider Ackermann got glowing reviews for his first collection at Tom Ford. Sarah Burton debuted at Givenchy, also positive. Brands, by the way, are starting to stage smaller shows. When you go from 1,000 seats to as few as 200, many egos are about to be bruised.

• Dana Thomas has the scoop that LVMH founder Bernard Arnault, who was initially expected to step down at age 75 last year, doesn’t plan to relinquish the reins until 85—a whole 9 more years.

• Frederic Arnault (son of Bernard, boyfriend of Lisa) is appointed ceo of Loro Piana, switching over from the company’s watches division. The transition from hard to soft luxury is not always the easiest to make.

• It’s quite nice to be outside of the US while Trump’s tariffs tantrums go down and watch Canadian coverage of the antics. (Sitting in a incredibly chic wabi-sabi lakeside cafe in BC, to be exact.) Anyway, American consumers and their credit cards have gotten the economy through rough patches in the recent past but might be maxed out now. At the end of 2024, the average US household’s credit-card debt surpassed $10,000 for the first time since 2009.

• P2P fashion rental platform Pickle raises $12 million in its Series A, bringing its total funding to $20 million, which means it’s time to plug my previous write up of them. Because having to deal with inventory is the worst.

• Semaglutide (generic Ozempic) also came off the shortage list, joining Tirzepatide.

• Viral things out of Paris Fashion Week, now that the month-long circuit is wrapped. Realistic feet heels made me feel things.

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• Realistic boobs on a male model made editors feel envy. Thanks Duran Lantink!

• Coperni, a brand that really knows how to pump out a moment, crafted a Tamagotchi handbag. Not that I would be able to keep this alive any better.

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