Swift fans travel to Europe for cheaper tour tickets

LONDON — Thousands of Taylor Swift's ride-or-die fans who couldn't make it to last year's U.S. concert tour or didn't want to buy exorbitantly priced tickets to see her again are keeping a low profile. Found a solution. Europe.

The pop star kicked off the 18-city European leg of her record-setting Elas tour in Paris on Thursday, and in the coming weeks a planeload of Swifties will follow Miss Americana across the pond.

The concert may seem like a strange raison d'être of visiting 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 planning to fly overseas for the Ella tour, severe restrictions on ticket prices and resale in Europe mean seeing Swift's performances overseas may be more expensive than seeing Swift perform up close. He said he justified the expense by realizing it didn't cost that much and could even be cheaper. House.

“They said, '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.' said Expedia spokesperson and travel expert Melanie Fish.

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 get 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 (approximately $646) each, “which you could call brute force and dumb luck.” Swift then announced six November tour dates in Toronto, which is within driving distance of her home in Warren. Warren said the “Absolute Nosebleed Sheet” is already being sold on secondary resale sites such as Viagogo for C$3,000 ($2,194).

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 sees a boom similar to what Mastercard observed within a 2.5-mile (4-kilometer) radius of concert venues in U.S. cities it visited in 2023. I hope they will visit the hotel as well. Retail spending on items such as clothing, memorabilia, beauty products and supplies for friendship bracelets that fans exchange as part of the Elas Tour experience could also increase, the economist said.

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 you can find an opportunity to combine those two things, that's really special,” said Hale, who is currently pregnant with her first child.

120,000 SWIFTIES IS NOT WRONG FOR STOCKHOLM

The impact on local economies of what the zeitgeist has dubbed “Swiftnomics” and “Swiftrift” could be substantial. No wonder the special agreement the Singapore government signed with Swift earlier this year as Southeast Asia's only tourism hub sparked jealousy in the region.

European governments have not complained that their country is not among the dozen or so selected for the European leg of the Hellas Tour, but Gelsenkirchen, a city of about 264,000 people, is one of Germany's three largest cities. Some fans expressed surprise that there was one. cut.

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.

Not to be outdone when it comes to spotting trends, the real estate rental company cited 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. It is said that 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, 'I only want to go to countries I've never been to. I've seen Taylor Swift,'” she said.

Visits to the Scandinavian cities of Oslo and Gothenburg are also 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 tourism survive the ages?

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.

Colleen Barry in Milan, Chisato Tanaka in Stockholm, Anne D'Innocenzio in New York, David Koenig in Dallas, Thomas Adamson in Paris and Brian Merry in London contributed reporting.