Taylor Swift's Eras tour grossed more than $1 billion last year, becoming the highest-grossing series of concerts ever. Photo: Jeff Kravitz/TAS23/Getty Images
Tim Brown, 44, and his wife, Marcella, 34, may not consider themselves bona fide "Swifties," but when it was announced last June that Taylor Swift would be visiting their corner of the world this summer, they couldn't resist joining in compete for a few tickets.
A post-pandemic appetite for live music events has led to a surge in global interest in the American singer-songwriter's Eras tour, which surpassed $1 billion in sales in November and became the highest-grossing concert series in history.
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The summer pop culture event arrives in Europe next month, kicking off on May 9 in Paris and ending on August 20 in London with 49 dates in between in Sweden, Ireland, Portugal, Germany, Poland, Austria, Spain and Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
The unique nature of the tour's ticketing system, which was overhauled last year after a number of issues, means there will be a mass movement of traveling fans who will not only be Swiftie in their affiliation, but also Swift-like in their willingness to to travel the continent.
In anticipation of high demand, Ticketmaster introduced a pre-registration system that rewarded some early applicants with access codes for the actual ticket sales, via staggered windows for each city.
The pre-sale system was designed to prioritize real fans over 'scalpers' - people who buy and resell tickets for a quick profit - and also saw many fans register for tickets at multiple destinations in Europe to increase their chances.
Tim and Marcella, who live in Norwich, not only registered for the nearest concerts - in London and Liverpool - but also in Amsterdam and Lisbon. The pair lucked out with a pair of €91 tickets in the Portuguese capital and turned the trip into a weekend getaway. "I used to live in Lisbon, so I thought why not kill two birds with one stone," said Tim. "We booked flights and four nights' accommodation on the same day." They are far from alone.
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Katie Soo, the chief business officer of DICE, a rival ticketing company, said: "The excitement and uncertainty inherent in the ticket purchasing process may have inadvertently encouraged fans to request tickets in multiple cities, making them more likely to travel across Europe to travel. to attend the concerts."
Hotel prices
Several European cities have already reported a surge in demand for hotel and short-term rental accommodation during the summer, when Hurricane Swift will arrive. In Edinburgh, Liverpool and Cardiff, the Travelodge chain's rooms around Swift's June dates have been sold out since August 2023, a month after tickets for the shows went on sale.
In Paris, where fans expect Swift to debut a revamped version of the Eras show with songs from the new album Tortured Poets Department, 80% of hotels and apartments on Booking.com are already full. In Warsaw, only 9% of hotels on the same site are still available on August 2.
Not all 18 cities covered by the Eras tour are obvious tourist destinations. From July 17 to 19, Swift will play three concerts at the 65,000-capacity home base of Schalke 04 football club in Gelsenkirchen in the Ruhr area, West Germany. The city's lesser-known name prompted an American chat show host to say that "the place may not even exist."
But even in Germany's quiet zone, the influx of Swift fans is temporarily transforming the hotel market: any two-bedroom apartments that remain available cost €800-2,000 per night, while cheaper accommodation is only available in surrounding towns just offshore lie. usual tourist routes as Gelsenkirchen, such as Essen, Bochum or Herne.
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Cities with stricter rules allowing Airbnb-style holiday rentals and a more limited supply of short-term apartments report a particularly marked increase in rates during Swift's visit, with around 30% year-on-year increases in rental prices in Cardiff, Edinburgh and Milan, according to AirDNA, a data analytics company specializing in the short-term rental market.
Of all the tour's European stops, Vienna is experiencing the most notable impact on the rental market, with booking rates for the nights of Swift's concerts up 44% higher in February than at the same point the year before. By the end of March, the number of nights booked in the Austrian capital for the duration of Swift's stay in the second week of August had increased by 430% compared to the same period in 2023.
Tourism
When Luke Tilden's wife, Tatjana, suggested last summer that the couple buy their 13- and 15-year-old daughters, Lena and Maya, tickets to a Taylor Swift performance for Christmas, the 53-year-old Brit initially brushed it off. "There's no way we're going to get a ticket without paying through our noses, I thought," said Tilden, who works as an interpreter at the European Parliament in Brussels.
But after pre-registering for tickets in London, Paris and Munich, the Tildens were unexpectedly lucky with four tickets in southern Germany and turned the concert visit into a mini vacation: "We are going to visit the in-laws in Bavaria, enjoy get out of the countryside, go for a walk."
The hope in cities across Europe is that this will be replicated on a large scale, with fan excitement translating into generous spending on food, shopping and leisure. In Stockholm, for example, where authorities expect 159,000 visitors from 135 countries by mid-May, the Chamber of Commerce has predicted a €50 million increase in spending. "We hope that the whole city will be enthusiastic about the Eras tour," said Tomas Andersson, spokesman for the Swedish capital's tourism board.
However, whether fans will necessarily behave like regular tourists is up for debate. "Pop culture tourists don't necessarily care about traditional buildings and authentic restaurants," says Maria Lexhagen, professor at the European Tourism Research Institute, Mid Swedish University.
"Connecting with other fan communities is a stronger motivation, as is the idea that they can get closer to the stars themselves. Many of them will map out where Swift spends her time in the city - they'll look for seemingly marginal but meaningful places like alleys or coffee shops. Venues may be hoping for a repeat of Sydney in February, when Swift raided an unassuming Italian restaurant in the suburbs and put his name in global media headlines.
In Stockholm, the tourism board said it expected bookstores and second-hand clothing stores, rather than museums and royal palaces, to attract most arriving visitors. Some locations are being proactive: a restaurant within walking distance of the multi-purpose Friends Arena in Solna Community is hosting a "Taylor Swift Brunch Experience" with a karaoke stage; the waterfront nightclub Debaser is hosting a pre-concert party on May 16, an all-ages all-day party with a Swift-themed quiz on May 19 and an after-party the day after.
Related: Taylor Swift eats at Pellegrino 2000 restaurant in Sydney - and we missed the story
Environment
As the Swift circus rolls across the continent, the transport infrastructure of urban centers will also be tested. Around the tour's three-day stop in Dublin at the end of June, Irish Rail has announced additional late-night services to Cork and Limerick to meet the expected increase in demand. Additional tram and bus services may be announced soon.
Unlike railway companies, most airlines do not have the capacity to charter additional flights. Due to yield management - airlines adjust prices based on expected demand - a competition for air travel to cities where the Eras tour takes place is more likely to result in more expensive tickets than in additional flights.
Officials at Lisbon airport said no additional flights had been chartered around Swift's May 24 and 25 concerts, but demand was likely to be reflected in slightly higher load factors. A spokesperson for Amsterdam Schiphol said general aviation slots can be requested at short notice, but nothing special has been registered so far.
Calculating the environmental impact of the tour with any certainty was difficult, according to experts. "We can expect that some Swift fans will travel a long way to see one, if not several, shows across Europe," said Stefan Gössling, professor of tourism at Linnaeus University in Kalmar, Sweden. "But measuring the environmental impact of these trips is extremely difficult - it would involve a lot of guesswork."
This did not mean that the ecological footprint was negligible. "Every flight someone makes contributes to demand and thus influences supply considerations," Gössling said. "The greater the demand, the more aircraft are in service."
The ecological footprint of a pop star is easier to estimate. Swift owns two jets from the French manufacturer Dassault, whose journeys can be followed. During the 2023 leg of the Eras tour, Swift's planes spent 166 hours across the US in approximately 75 individual trips, although it is possible they were used by people other than the singer.
According to data available through the open-access aviation tracker ADS-B exchange, Swift's aircraft produced CO2 emissions of approximately 2,830 tonnes of CO 2 equivalent over the course of the US Eras tour - approximately 1,700 times the annual contribution of an average person.
A spokesperson for Swift told US media last year that the pop star had purchased more than double the carbon credits needed to offset all tour travel before the start of the tour in March 2023. Carbon offset credits are tradable certificates that allow buyers to offset their emissions by investing in environmental projects that claim to reduce carbon emissions, although recent studies have questioned the effectiveness of these schemes.
Additional reporting by Ajit Niranjan
