Taylor Swift is redefining what it is to be a success in the music industry – and simultaneously changing the travel industry.
Last year, the U.S leg of her Eras tour bolstered the economy Stateside by at least $10billion (£8.6billion), according to the U.S Travel Association. The ‘Taylor Swift Effect’ was name-checked in the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s annual report as a growth factor for local economies in cities she visited.
Swift is now at the vanguard of ‘tour tourism’ – a burgeoning trend where holidaymakers choose their destination based on attending a gig there.
And it’s big business. During the US leg of Swift’s tour, hotels in cities she played in reported record-breaking occupancy rates. But those hotels weren’t just full, they were coining it.
Travel analysis firm Lighthouse aggregated data across 13 tour stops in North America, and found hotel room prices experienced an average bump of 7.7 per cent compared to the month prior to tour dates. This rise happened across the entire month, with Swift only playing for two to three nights, suggesting concert-going correlated to people taking mini-breaks.
It’s a conclusion corroborated by travel and hospitality data analysts RateGain, which said that within the U.S tour, destinations experienced a ‘long-tail effect’ around concert dates: people used the gig as a lynchpin around which to plan a ‘Swiftcation’, staying a week or two after the date Swift played.
These pilgrimages to see Swift are representative of a growing trend. In a November 2023 survey Expedia conducted about tour tourism, 70 per cent of respondents said they were more likely than ever to travel outside their home town to attend a concert.
Expedia says tour tourism is on the rise due to myriad factors, from post-pandemic enthusiasm for travel, consumer hunger to attend large-scale gigs again and, in the case of Swift, an unusually devoted fan base willing to go to great lengths to see her, considering how elusive Eras tickets are (one analysis of TicketMaster data concluded those trying to score a ticket had a 1 in 25 chance).
In 2024, Swift is taking her Eras Tour to both Europe and Australasia.
Evidence is already mounting that the record-breaking tour is inspiring holiday plans in Europe.
According to Opodo, searches of travel to cities during the dates of the Swift concerts are well up compared to searches to the same cities the year prior. ‘Searches [for travel to] Stockholm have increased almost five-fold (473 per cent) year on year for [the dates Swift is playing],’ Opodo reports.
Searches for travel to Warsaw are 339 per cent higher over her August tour dates compared to the same period in 2023, while searches for travel to Edinburgh and Liverpool over 7 to 15 June have grown 176 per cent and 133 per cent respectively.
Opodo also reports significant spikes in searches to Zurich, Lyon, Milan, Amsterdam, and Vienna.
Notably, despite 53 dates in the U.S in 2023, the Eras tour continues to lure Americans abroad. According to Opodo ‘U.S travellers lead the board globally for the most searches over concert dates to Paris, Madrid, Dublin, Amsterdam, Zurich, Hamburg and London’.
Most impressively, Opodo suggests Australians are willing to make a long-haul Taylor Swift pilgrimage: their travel searches suggest they are looking to head to London over any other Swift-tour destination.
It could be Aussies are looking to make a trip of a lifetime, using Swift as an excuse. Or it could be a more cost-effective trip to make than seeing her closer to home.
Australian hotel prices are already surging for the period Swift is playing down under, with hotel prices in Melbourne and Sydney climbing to over AUS $1,000 (£785) a night, while one hostel in Sydney Central is charging AUS $565 (£482) for a private room on the night of her gig.
Aware of how far (literally) people are willing to go to see Swift, savvy tour companies are helping music lovers build out their holidays. London-based Contiki, a company that specialises in social travel for 18 to 35-year-olds, is catering directly to the tour tourism market during the European leg of Swift’s Eras Tour.
The ‘Taylor Your Itinerary 2024’ is an offer selling five trips pinned to the Eras concert dates across four European cities. The trips have Swift-inspired itineraries and, cannily, the company has offered a 13 per cent discount (13 being Taylor Swift’s favourite number) to Eras Tour ticket holders booking any trip longer than two weeks.
And for those touring Swifties worried they’ll be bereft when the Eras Tour finally ends, there’s a salve – in October 2024, a four-night, Swift-Themed Cruise is setting sail from Port of Miami, the day after Swift performs her last show in the city.
