'It immerses you in fantasy': Why Bridgerton tourism is booming

After Tehreem Iqbal started watching Bridgerton, she knew she had to travel from Canada to the UK to see the filming locations in real life.

"It was a dream of mine," the 31-year-old says.

So when Tehreem began planning a trip to England to visit family, she also drew up an itinerary of excursions to visit the places where her favourite show was shot.

Since the first episode of Bridgerton came out on Christmas Day 2020, the Regency romantic drama has been a huge hit for Netflix, which lists it as one of its most-viewed shows. The first half of season four, which was released at the end of January, appeared in the streamer's top 10 most-watched shows in 91 countries.

Though the show is largely set in London's Mayfair, its main filming locations include Bath, where the Royal Crescent is used for the Featherington home, and Greenwich, where Ranger's House is shot as the home of the eponymous Bridgerton family.

The series also uses a smattering of other grand properties across the country, like Castle Howard in Yorkshire, Belton House in Lincolnshire and Wrest Park in Bedfordshire, to demonstrate the opulence of the Georgian upper classes.

Fans say they're hooked by the show's aesthetics as much as its storylines, and they told BBC News visiting the filming locations helped them feel part of "the Ton" - even if the 21st century traffic and crowds of tourists reduced the regality.

Tehreem's visit to Greenwich was "misty and slightly rainy", but she didn't care.

"It was a big moment for me to see it in person," says the superfan, who has attracted the attention of Bridgerton actress Nicola Coughlan and author Julia Quinn with her artwork of the show.

Dive into the Bridgerton corner of Instagram or TikTok and you'll see countless posts from fans posing in front of the Abbey Deli in Bath, which doubles as the Modiste dress shop, or the Old Royal Naval College, the backdrop for various scenes. Much of this content is accompanied by the show's soundtrack and references to Lady Whistledown and the "gentle reader".

Melissa Maddock has built a following of nearly 800,000 on TikTok by touring filming locations. Visiting Bath "genuinely felt like stepping into the show", she says.

The 26-year-old from Nottingham says the locations she saw looked "the exact same as you see in the TV show", in contrast to other programmes which use "a lot of set dressing".

When the first episodes of series four came out last month, Alexis Reise Brodman, 27, was awake and ready to watch them when they hit Netflix at 03:00 in New York.

And she watched all four episodes again that night, when she hosted a watch party for her friends with finger sandwiches, scones and tea.

When Alexis visited the UK last year, she made sure to visit the show's filming locations in Bath and Greenwich.

It was "a little jarring" to see the car park outside Ranger's House, says Alexis, but she was still "starstruck" to be there in real life.

Tehreem agrees and, in contrast to content creator Melissa, says some of the locations she visited surprised her in person, telling us Ranger's House looked like a "normal building", with buses driving nearby and the rumble of tourists. She says it made her appreciate the show's dressing and post-production work, with the exterior transformed with wisteria and made to look like it was surrounded by other properties.

Paul Elliott has been running Bridgerton tours in Bath since 2021. He wasn't that interested in the show when it came out, but as a tour guide who experienced his industry "crashing and burning" during the pandemic, he says hearing the first season's viewing figures "made me wake up and pay attention".

When he first started offering Bridgerton tours, Covid restrictions meant he was limited to groups of six and he had to take customers' temperatures.

Since then, he's given tours to people from around the world, he tells BBC News, and even took six Bridgerton fans around the city on Christmas Day.

"I don't think any of us expected quite the phenomenon we've seen around Bridgerton," says Seb Conway, general manager of Basildon Park in Berkshire, which was used for the Featheringtons' garden and Lady Tilley Arnold's house. He says people from "all over the world" have visited the property because of its Bridgerton link.

"We even had people coming here and getting engaged because it was featured in Bridgerton," he says.

Seb says it's particularly interesting to see the tweaks the production team makes to the site - such as using artificial flowers in the rose garden for a scene actually filmed in winter, and using props and careful camera shots to hide mirrors that couldn't be taken down.

For some people, visiting places where Bridgerton is filmed is about more than just seeing the filming locations with their own eyes.

Alia Pyatt, a 31-year-old cosplayer from California, has made her own Bridgerton-inspired Regency dresses and hopes to visit the show's locations in costume this summer.

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"It immerses you in that fantasy," Alia says, describing it as a form of escapism.

She and her friends, also big fans of the show, have cosplayed as Bridgerton characters. As well as dressing up, they also try to replicate the posture, behaviours - such as using a fan - and "old-world way of speaking" of the Regency period.

Alia's desire to experience and embody the show has been shared by other Bridgerton fans, leading to a boom in Bridgerton-themed experiences and events, including candlelight concerts and balls.

London's Lanesborough hotel runs a Bridgerton afternoon tea. "Aesthetically, it's a very Instagrammable experience," says Jo Stevenson, the hotel's head of sales and marketing.

Netflix sends the hotel a mood board with the flowers, colours and dresses used in each series to help shape the menu. Netflix and production company Shondaland also sign off every aspect of the experience, down to the names of the cakes and cocktails.

Tehreem has attended Bridgerton-themed events in Toronto, where she met other fans of the show and felt "immersed in Regency world".

But sadly, her visits to the real-life Bridgerton locations haven't yet yielded any sightings of the show being filmed, as she'd hoped.

"I thought I would catch Lady Bridgerton at the Bridgerton House," she says, "but there were no wisteria or carriages to be seen."