Filming for The White Lotus Season 4 begins this month, with production set at Airelles Saint-Tropez, Château de la Messardière.

It’s a predictable choice, in the best sense. The series has always favoured hotels that offer more than just aesthetics – places with scale, history, and enough separation from the outside world to let things play out uninterrupted. La Messardière fits that brief precisely.

Set high above the Bay of Pampelonne, the 19th-century château feels deliberately removed from St Tropez itself. You arrive via a long, winding driveway that reveals very little until the last moment – a detail that feels entirely intentional. From the terraces, you’re looking one way towards the town, the other towards the sweep of beach below. You’re in it, but not of it.

And that’s really the point.

The hotel is larger than it first appears, but cleverly designed so it never quite reads that way. Rooms are split between the main château and a series of pale, ochre-toned buildings folded into the hillside – what looks low-rise from one angle quietly drops away to reveal more space beneath. There are gardens you don’t immediately find, a second pool you only come across later, paths that feel like they lead somewhere private even when they don’t.

It’s exactly the kind of layout The White Lotus tends to use well – not just visually, but structurally. Space that allows people to cross paths, avoid each other, or think they’re alone when they’re not.

Then there’s how it actually runs.

Beach isn’t a scramble here – you can be driven down to Jardin Tropézina in a Rolls-Royce, which is either wonderfully excessive or completely logical, depending on how quickly you settle in. Lunch might be taken there, or back at the hotel, where things lean more classic: long tables, proper service, ice cream arriving on a cart without needing to ask.

The restaurants cover enough ground to keep you in place — French, pan-Asian, lighter poolside options — but the real appeal is that you don’t feel any urgency to leave. Which, again, is useful if you’re filming a television series built on keeping people contained.

Airelles, as a group, has been building a portfolio that prioritises atmosphere over uniformity. Each hotel feels site-specific, shaped by its surroundings rather than a fixed brand template. La Messardière reflects that approach — formal without being rigid, detailed without ever tipping into excess.

The timing is also notable. As filming begins in St Tropez, Airelles Venezia opens on April 1st, marking the brand’s move into Italy.

Venice is a different proposition entirely. A city that doesn’t lack for grand hotels – and is generally sceptical of new ones. Space is tighter, scrutiny is higher, and everything is more immediate.

If St Tropez offers space and distance, Venice operates in a more intimate register. Everything is closer, more layered, more immediate. Which makes it an interesting setting for Airelles – a brand that understands how to shape atmosphere without overwhelming it.

Together, the two moments – a major production and a significant opening – put Airelles in a particular position. Not everywhere, but in the right places. And if The White Lotus has taught us anything, it’s that the setting is never just the setting.

If you’re thinking about St Tropez – or curious about what Airelles is doing in Venice – we can make it happen.