Luring tourists via TV shows

Actor Jared Wofford of Life’s Rewards outside the Don Cesar hotel in St Petersburg, Florida. — AP

Remember that longing you felt after an episode of Sex And The City to shop at the characters’ favourite New York haunts and drink Cosmopolitans at the same bars? Or that sense of wanderlust for the seaside cliffs of Ireland after watching Game Of Thrones?

Hollywood’s flattering spotlight has put small towns on the map, like Wilmington, North Carolina, from Dawson’s Creek and the woods of Senoia, Georgia, from The Walking Dead. And that’s exactly what travel marketers in St Petersburg and Clearwater, Florida, were hoping to capitalise on when they commissioned an original, scripted TV series, seeking to draw quarantine-weary tourists to the area’s sugar sand beaches.