KEY POINTS:
In the 10 years since its debut, Sex and the City has spawned countless girls'-night-out discussions about how to capture the glamorous lifestyle of Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda.
In New York it has even spawned an industry of tie-in tourist activities - but nothing like this. With
the movie version of the show just weeks away from release in London and New York next month, it is shaping up to be the most successfully hyped release of the season - one luxury travel firm believes women will pay £3000 ($7485) a day to follow the Manhattan footsteps of their idols.
Destination on Location, which is selling a four-day break in the city for $24,000, promises breakfast in Cafeteria, where the foursome brunched, gossiped and ruminated on the dating life; clothes shopping at Carrie's favourite stores; and clubbing at the hottest New York nightspots, such as Bungalow 8.
And as if to prove the accuracy of "The Rules", which argue that being hard to get can increase the ardour of an admirer, the first person to sign up to the trip was a woman from Singapore, where the show is banned.
Destination on Location offers "set-jetting", a range of package tours tied to famous films and television series. Future tours include one to New Zealand to visit places featured in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Joanne Konstantinakos, a former magazine publisher who founded the firm, says: "Sex and the City is a perfect opportunity because it's a global phenomenon; you don't have to be a New Yorker to follow it."
All the guests will be allocated a stylist to travel with them on their trip round New York's swankiest boutiques, salons, and even to designers' studios. Then aspiring Carries can peel off to go trapezing at Chelsea Piers; Mirandas can go jogging in Central Park; and Samanthas get to attend a "How to Please Your Man" workshop.
The end of the television series in 2004 failed to dampen the tourist industry surrounding Sex and the City, and tour buses and specially chartered limos still regularly pull up on the block where Carrie lived, or by the bakery where Miranda stuffed her face with cupcakes, or outside the shop where Charlotte bought her rabbit.
Now the movie is generating a whole new flurry of speculation about what has happened to the characters during their hiatus, complete with internet teasers, red herring rumours and acres of coverage in magazines.
Konstantinakos is keen to stress that the trip is not just for women. "If you are Stanford or if you are the elusive Mr Big and want to join us for certain parts of the weekend ... we can custom-design your trip with activities such as suit fittings, golfing or a helicopter ride over the city."
- INDEPENDENT
Sex and the City opens here on June 5.