Thousands of Americans are following Taylor Swift to Europe after finding cheaper Eras Tour tickets here. Accommodation prices have exploded in cities where concerts are held

Thousands of Taylor Swift fans who missed the US concert tour last year or did not want to buy tickets at exorbitant prices to see her again have found a new solution: fly to Europe, Association Press reports.

The pop star is scheduled to start the 18-city European tour on Thursday, and planes full of Swifties plan to follow her across the ocean in the coming weeks. The organizers said that Americans bought 20% of the tickets for the four sold-out shows in which Swift appears. Stockholm, the next stop on the tour, is expecting about 10,000 spectators from the US.

Some North American fans who plan to fly abroad for the Eras Tour said they justified the expense by the fact that concert tickets are much cheaper than in the US.

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

Die-hard fans following their favorite singer or band on tour is not a new phenomenon. “Groupie” appeared at the end of the 1960s as a word for ardent followers of rock bands.

More recently, music festivals like Coachella in California and Glastonbury in England, and Las Vegas concert residencies by the likes of Elton John, Lady Gaga and Adele, have drawn travelers to places they might not otherwise visit, Fish noted. .

“It seems that it is more than a structural change, maybe a personality transformation that we all went through,” said Natalia Lechmanova, chief economist for Europe at the Mastercard Economics Institute.

After Swift arrives in Europe, Lechmanova expects restaurants and hotels to see the same growth Mastercard has seen within 4 kilometers of concert venues in US cities in 2023. may increase retail spending on clothing, souvenirs, beauty products and supplies, or the friendship bracelets that fans exchange as part of the Eras Tour experience, the economist said.

The local economic impact of “Swiftonomics” can be considerable. It’s no wonder that the exclusive arrangement the Singapore government struck with Swift to make the city-state its only stop in Southeast Asia earlier this year sparked regional jealousy.

Searches on the Airbnb platform for the UK cities where Swift has concerts in June and August – Edinburgh, Liverpool, Cardiff and London – have increased by an average of 337% since tickets went on sale last summer.

In Stockholm, 120,000 out-of-towners from 130 countries are expected to arrive in the Swedish capital this month, said the chief economist of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, Carl Bergqvist. “Stockholm is the only Scandinavian city on the Eras tour and airlines have added extra flights to nearby Denmark, Finland and Norway to bring people to the May 17-19 shows,” he said.

“The city’s 40,000 hotel rooms are sold out, even though prices have skyrocketed for the tournament dates,” Bergqvist said. “Concert-goers are expected to inject approximately $46 million into the local economy during their stay, an estimate that does not include what they paid for Swift tickets or to get to Sweden,” he added.