Taylor Swift boosted Asian hotel demand. Europe’s next.
It’s no secret Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” is the hottest concert ticket in town…in just about every major city around the world.
But the latest numbers from the 17-night Asia-Pacific leg of the concert tour should motivate travelers to book their hotels for the upcoming European leg. If you don’t, you might find “You Need to Calm Down” about paying high rates for a mediocre-at-best guest room.
Hotels in Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne and Singapore benefitted from Swifties who needed a place to stay after belting out their favorite songs at the popstar’s performance. Total concert attendance ranged from 220,000 people across four nights in Tokyo to 330,000 people across a six-night stint in Singapore.
Neighborhoods immediately around the concert venues saw the biggest surge in hotel performance. Hotels in Singapore’s Marina Bay submarket near Singapore National Stadium performed 70% better while Swift was in town compared to the same dates a year ago, according to hotel data firm STR.
Hotels in the Sydney West submarket near the Australian city’s Accor Stadium performed 65% better than a year ago; those in Tokyo near the Tokyo Dome performed 61% better than a year ago.
Most of this was driven by higher nightly rates charged during the concert dates. Tokyo East, the submarket closest to the Tokyo Dome, saw hotel rates a whopping 55% higher during the Swift concert than a year prior.
What the hotel execs say
The Swift bump in business isn’t just anecdotal. The U.S. Travel Association reported last September that the total economic impact of “The Eras Tour” in the U.S. likely eclipsed $10 billion. This came from combined direct spending from concertgoers as well as indirect spending from people who still went to a city Swift was playing in — but didn’t actually attend the concert itself.
“Our hotels have seen huge surges in demand and [average daily rates] during Taylor Swift’s ‘The Eras Tour’ with a city’s [hotel performance] nearly doubling during her concert dates,” Marriott CEO Anthony Capuano said last year during a company analyst meeting. “Customers want to be at these events and enjoy these experiences in person.”
Over at Wyndham, it’s a similar story.
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“The Taylor Swift model is absolutely factored in. It’s the new line item in revenue management,” Dimitris Manikis — Wyndham’s president of Europe, the Middle East, Eurasia and Africa — told TPG last fall. “How do we actually maximize it? It was always sports events, but now it’s not just sports anymore. It’s everything. Airlines are now factoring it. Cities are factoring it.”
Speak, er, book now for European dates
STR previously reported that European cities are already seeing hotel rooms book up fast ahead of “The Eras Tour” sweeping across the continent. Hotels in Edinburgh are nearly 80% booked for the nights Swift performs in June at the city’s Murrayfield Stadium.
Hotels in Dublin are more than 60% booked for the dates Swift performs at Aviva Stadium; Lisbon as well as Cardiff and Liverpool in the U.K. all have hotels more than 50% booked during “The Eras Tour” dates in each respective city. Zurich and Warsaw, Poland, hotel advance booking occupancy rates are hovering around the 50% mark during Swift’s concert, per STR.
Keep in mind: It’s still about two months before the regular summer travel season picks up. European hotel rates were already sky-high in recent years thanks to the surge in Americans returning after pandemic travel restrictions were lifted.
Add a Swiftie surge, and it’s looking like it will once again be a great summer for European hotel owners…but maybe not so great for your wallet.
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