LONDON — Thousands of Taylor Swift's ride-or-die fans who missed last year's U.S. concert tour or didn't want to pay exorbitantly priced tickets to see her again have an unexpected solution. I found a solution. It was to fly to Europe. .
The pop star is scheduled to kick off the 18-city European leg of her record-setting Elas tour in Paris on Thursday, and a planeload of Swifties will follow Miss Americana across the pond in the coming weeks. The arena where Swift will perform announced that Americans had purchased 20% of the tickets for her four sold-out shows.Approximately 10,000 concertgoers from the United States are expected in Stockholm, the next stop on the tour.
The concert may seem like a strange raison d'etre to visit a foreign country, especially when fans can watch Elas' tour from home through a documentary currently streaming on Disney+. But online travel company Expedia says Swift's fans' continent-hopping is part of a larger trend it calls “tour tourism,” observing a pattern that emerged during Beyoncé's Renaissance World Tour.
For some North American fans who plan to fly overseas for the Ella Tour, severe restrictions on ticket prices and resale in Europe mean seeing Swift perform abroad is less likely than seeing her closer to home. He said he justified the expense by realizing it didn't cost anything and could even be cheaper.
“They say, 'Wait a minute, you can either spend $1,500 and go see your favorite artist in Miami, or you can use that $1,500 to buy concert tickets, round-trip airfare, and three nights in a hotel. Melanie Fish, Expedia spokesperson and travel expert, said:
That was the experience of Jennifer Warren, 43, who lives in St. Catharines, a city in the Niagara region of Ontario. She and her 11-year-old son love Swift, but have had trouble getting what they consider to be affordable tickets in the United States. Undeterred, Warren and her husband decided to plan a vacation in Europe wherever they could find seats. I looked it up and it turned out to be Hamburg, Germany.
“There's a lot to be gained by being able to go out and see the world and see your favorite artists and performers at the same time,” said Warren, director of research and innovation. For mutual insurance companies.
The three VIP tickets she secured near the stage cost 600 euros (about $646) each, “which you could call brute force and dumb luck.” Swift then announced six November tour dates in Toronto, within driving distance of her home in Warren. Warren said the “absolute nosebleed sheet” is already being sold for C$3,000 ($2,194) on secondary resale sites such as Viagogo.
Tour tourism: is it really a thing?
It's not a new phenomenon for devoted fans to follow their favorite singers and bands on tour. “Groupie” emerged in the late 1960s as a somewhat derogatory term for ardent followers of his rock band. Deadheads set out on a journey following the Grateful Dead from city to city in his 1970s.
More recently, music festivals such as Coachella in California and Glastonbury in the UK, as well as concert residencies in Las Vegas by the likes of Elton John, Lady Gaga and Adele, have drawn travelers to places they might not otherwise visit. Fish pointed out.
Travel and entertainment analysts have also spoken of pent-up demand from consumers for experiences over material goods since the coronavirus pandemic. Some believe that music lovers' drive to broaden their fan base is part of the same popular culture correction.
“This seems to be more than just a structural change, it's probably a character change that we've all experienced,” said Natalia Lekmanova, chief European economist at the Mastercard Institute of Economic Research.
As Swift hopscotches across Europe, Lekmanova expects a similar economic stimulus to restaurants and hotels that Mastercard observed within a 2.5-mile radius of concert venues in U.S. cities it visited in 2023. I expect it to happen. The strength of the US dollar against the euro could also increase retail spending. The economist said the consumables include apparel, souvenirs, beauty products and friendship bracelets that fans will exchange as part of the Elas Tour experience.
Former college roommates Lizzie Hale, 34, of Los Angeles, and Mitch Golding, 33, of Austin, Texas, had already decided last summer to get tickets to Paris. I had tickets to the Elas tour in LA. Also London and Edinburgh, Scotland. They considered a European concert trip to supplement travel plans they had planned to celebrate Golding's birthday in May 2020, but had to cancel due to the pandemic.
Golding managed to secure VIP tickets to one of Swift's three shows in Stockholm. He, Hale, and two other of his friends planned his 10-day trip, which included Amsterdam and Copenhagen.
“As someone who enjoys traveling and who enjoys music, if I can find an opportunity to combine the two, it’s really special,” said Hale, who is pregnant with her first child.
For Stockholm, 120,000 Swifties can't be wrong
The impact on local economies of what Zeitgeist has dubbed “Swiftnomics” and “Swiftrift” could be substantial. Airbnb reported on Tuesday that searches on its platform for the UK cities where Swift will perform in June and August (Edinburgh, Liverpool, Cardiff and London) increased by an average of 337% when tickets went on sale last summer.
The real estate rental company, which is no stranger to spotting trends, cited the demand as an example of “passion tourism,” or travel “driven by concerts, sports, and other cultural events.”
Karl Bergqvist, chief economist at the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said 120,000 expats from 130 countries, including 10,000 Americans, are expected to flock to the Swedish capital this month. Stockholm is the only Scandinavian city on Swift's tour, and the airline has added additional flights from neighboring Denmark, Finland and Norway to bring people to the May 17-19 show, he said. said.
Bergqvist said the city's 40,000 hotel rooms are sold out, even though room rates have soared to coincide with tour dates. Concertgoers are expected to pump around SEK 500 million, or more than $46 million, into the local economy during their stay, but this estimate does not include the cost of Swift's tickets or travel to Sweden. He says there is no.
“This is therefore going to be a huge deal for the tourism sector in Sweden and Stockholm in particular,” Bergqvist said.
Nightclubs, restaurants, and bars are seizing the opportunity to cater to fans with Taylor Swift-themed events, including karaoke, quizzes, and post-concert dance parties.
Houston resident Caroline Matlock, 29, saw Swift more than a year ago when the Elas Tour came to the Texas city. Now she's making more of her friendship bracelets and learning some Swedish while preparing to watch a three-and-a-half-hour show in Stockholm. The idea of meeting Swift in Europe belonged to a friend of hers, and Matlock needed some convincing at first.
“I was like, 'If there's a country I've never been to, I want to go.' I've seen Taylor Swift,” she said.
Visits to the Scandinavian cities of Oslo and Gothenburg are on the itinerary. The concert will be the last night of the trip, and Matlock is looking forward to interacting with Swifties from other countries. “Americans in particular tend to have a culture that's very obsessed with anything Taylor Swift related, so I'm curious to see if audiences will be more nervous.”
Will tour tourism continue after Eras?
It remains to be seen whether the music tourism trend will be as long and strong as Swift and Beyoncé's, and whether it will carry over to Billie Eilish, Usher, and other artists scheduled to tour the world next year. . Expedia's Fish believes other big-name acts in Europe this summer will prove that booking international travel for concerts is popular.
Kat Morga, a Nashville-based travel consultant, isn't so sure. Morga saw Swift perform in Nashville last year and helped two clients with school-age children book a family trip to Europe this summer that included a Swift concert. But she believes the difficulty of navigating language barriers, currency conversion, international banking regulations and the risk of cancellation to purchase tickets will limit the appeal of regular live travel. Masu.
“I think this is abnormal,” Morga said. “Typically, people don't plan a $20,000 family vacation just because Taylor Swift is there. She's a once-in-a-lifetime thing. She's special.”
Glenn Fogel, CEO of Booking Holdings, whose company operates Booking.com, Priceline.com, Agoda.com, Kayak and OpenTable, said the company is a tourism powerhouse. He is even less enthusiastic about concert tours. He said the Swift effect causes a “bit of a shock” when superstars visit smaller destinations, but for the global travel industry “one star going from place to place makes no difference”. Ta.
“It might change a little bit. Someone was going to take a week-long vacation to the Caribbean. Instead, they said, 'Let's go on a trip to Taylor Swift's world.' ,” Vogel said. “It doesn't increase. It just moves from here to there.”