Taylor Swift fans are jumping on the ‘tourist tourism’ trend to get cheaper tickets abroad

Thousands of Taylor Swift fans, who missed her US concert tour last year or did not want to buy expensive tickets to see her again, have found an elusive solution: traveling to Europe.

The pop star is set to kick off the 18-city European leg of her record-setting Eras Tour in Paris on Thursday, and planes loaded with Swifties are planning to follow Miss Americana across the pond in the coming weeks. The arena where Swift appeared said that Americans bought 20% of tickets for her four sold-out shows. Stockholm, the tour’s next stop, expects about 10,000 concertgoers from the United States to attend

A concert may seem like an odd reason to visit a foreign country, especially when fans can watch the Eras Tour from home via the documentary now streaming on Disney+. However, online travel company Expedia says continent-hopping by Swift’s fans is part of a larger trend it’s calling “tourism,” noting a pattern that emerged during Beyoncé’s Renaissance world tour.

Some North American fans planning to travel abroad for the Eras tour said they justified the cost after noting that tighter restrictions on ticket and resale fees in Europe made seeing Swift perform abroad no more expensive — and perhaps cheaper — than catching her. Close to home.

“They said, ‘Wait a minute, I can either spend $1,500 to go see my favorite artist in Miami, or I can take $1,500 and buy a concert ticket, a round-trip plane ticket, and three nights in a hotel room,'” said Melanie Fish, an Expedia spokeswoman and expert. travel.

That was the experience of Jennifer Warren, 43, who lives in St. Catharines in Ontario’s Niagara region. She and her 11-year-old son love Swift, but have had no luck getting what she considered affordable tickets in the United States. Warren and her husband decided to plan a European vacation wherever they could get seats. It turned out to be Hamburg, Germany.

“You get out, you get to see the world, and you get to see your favorite artist or performer at the same time, so there’s a lot of upside in that,” said Warren, who works as director of research and innovation. Mutual Insurance Company.

The three VIP tickets she got near the stage — “I like to call it dumb luck” — cost 600 euros ($646) each. Swift later announced six November tour dates in Toronto, a short drive from Warren’s home. The “ultimate nosebleed seats” are already selling for C$3,000 ($2,194) on secondary resale sites like Viagogo, Warren said.

Tourist Tourism: Is It Really a Thing?

Hardcore fans missing their favorite singer or band on tour is not a new phenomenon. The word “Groupie” emerged in the late 1960s as a somewhat derogatory word for ardent followers of rock bands. Deadheads took to the road in the 1970s following the Grateful Dead from city to city.

Fish noted that more recently music festivals, such as Coachella in California and Glastonbury in England, and concerts in Las Vegas by the likes of Elton John, Lady Gaga and Adele, have drawn travelers to places they might not have otherwise visited.

Travel and leisure analysts also spoke of pent-up consumer demand for “experiences” over physical objects since the coronavirus pandemic. Some believe that music fans’ desire to broaden their fandom horizons is part of the same overall cultural correction.

“It appears to be more of a structural shift, perhaps a personality shift, that we’ve all gone through,” said Natalia Leshmanova, chief European economist at the Mastercard Institute of Economics.

As Swift moves around Europe, Lichmanova expects restaurants and hotels to see the same boost that Mastercard observed within a 2.5-mile (4-kilometer) radius of concert venues in the US cities it visited in 2023. The strong value of the US dollar against the euro, the expert said. Economist This may also increase retail spending on clothing, souvenirs, beauty products and supplies that friendship bracelet enthusiasts exchange as part of the Eras Tour experience.

Former college roommates Lizzy Hale, 34, who lives in Los Angeles, and Mitch Golding, 33, who lives in Austin, Texas, had tickets to the Eras Tour in Los Angeles last summer when they decided to try to get tickets to Paris. London or Edinburgh, Scotland too. They saw the concert trip in Europe as a make-over of travel plans they had in May 2020 to celebrate Goulding’s birthday but had to cancel due to the pandemic.

Goulding was able to secure VIP tickets to one of Swift’s three shows in Stockholm. He, Hill and two other friends scheduled a 10-day trip that would also include time in Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

“As people who enjoy traveling and enjoy music, if you can find an opportunity to combine the two, that’s really special,” said Hill, who is pregnant with her first child.

For Stockholm, 120,000 SWIFT can’t be wrong

The local economic impact of what the zeitgeist has called the “SWIFT economy” and “rapid leverage” can be significant. Airbnb reported Tuesday that searches on its platform for the U.K. cities where Swift performs in June and August — Edinburgh, Liverpool, Cardiff and London — increased by 337% on average when tickets went on sale last summer.

Not to be outdone when it comes to trend spotting, the property rental company cited demand as an example of “passion tourism” or travel “driven by concerts, sports and other cultural events.”

In Stockholm, 120,000 extra-urban people from 130 countries – including 10,000 from the United States – are expected to flock to the Swedish capital this month, said Karl Bergqvist, chief economist at the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce. Stockholm is the only Scandinavian city on Swift’s tour, and airlines have added additional flights from neighboring Denmark, Finland and Norway to bring people to the May 17-19 shows, he said.

Bergqvist said the city’s 40,000 hotel rooms were sold out despite prices rising significantly during the tour dates. He added that concertgoers are expected to pump about 500 million Swedish krona, or more than $46 million, into the local economy over the course of their stay, an estimate that does not include what they paid for SWIFT tickets or to get to Sweden.

“So this is going to be huge 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, such as karaoke, contests and after-concert dance parties.

Houston resident Carolyn Matlock, 29, saw Swift more than a year ago when her Eras Tour came to the Texas city. Now she’s making more friendship bracelets and trying to learn a few words of Swedish as she prepares to watch the three-and-a-half-hour show in Stockholm. The idea of ​​seeing Swift in Europe was her friend’s idea, and Matlock needed some convincing at first.

“I was like, ‘I only want to go if it’s a country I haven’t been to.’ I’ve seen Taylor Swift,” she said.

Visiting the Scandinavian cities of Oslo and Gothenburg is on the itinerary. The concert is the final night of the trip and Matlock is looking forward to interacting with Swifties from other countries: “Americans tend to have a very obsessive culture, especially around Taylor Swift, so I’m curious to see if the audience is more attuned-under.”

Will tourist tourism continue after ages?

It remains to be seen whether the music tourism trend will have as long and strong legs as Swift and Beyoncé, and whether it will trickle down to Billie Eilish, Usher and other artists with world tours scheduled for next year. Expedia’s Fish believes other big-name artists in Europe this summer will prove that booking a foreign trip around a concert is popular.

Kat Morga, a travel consultant based in Nashville, isn’t so sure. Morga saw Swift perform in Nashville last year and helped two clients with school-age children book European family vacations this summer that included seeing Swift in concert. But she believes the difficulty of navigating ticket purchases through language barriers, currency conversions, international banking regulations and the risk of cancellation will limit the appeal of regular holidays.

“I think this is an anomaly,” Morga said. “People don’t typically build their huge $20,000 family vacation just because Taylor Swift is there. It’s a one-off. It’s special.”

Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel, whose company runs Booking.com, priceline.com, agoda.com, Kayak and OpenTable, is less enthusiastic about concert tours as a tourism instigator. He said the Swift effect causes a “little phase” when a star goes to smaller destinations, but for the worldwide travel industry, “one star touring the world doesn’t make a difference.”

“It might change it up a little bit. There was someone who was going to go to the Caribbean for a week’s vacation. Instead this person (says), ‘Let’s go to the Taylor Swift thing,'” Vogel said. “It doesn’t increase it. It moves it from here to there.” “

Associated Press journalists Colleen Barry in Milan, Chisato Tanaka in Stockholm, Anne DiNocenzio in New York, David Koenig in Dallas, Thomas Adamson in Paris and Brian Meili in London contributed reporting.

—Lisa Leff, Associated Press