Countries earn billions from Taylor Swift concerts. Why are fans willing to do anything for a ticket to her concert?

Taylor Swift is the best—selling solo artist with a net worth of over a billion dollars. In June 2024, the American broke a new record: her tour The Eras Tour turned out to be the most commercially successful in the world and caused a real economic shock in several countries at once. In the travel industry, the singer has completely revived the trend of the Beatlemania era — tourists make up their travel routes taking into account the venue of her concerts and bring fabulous revenue to airlines, hotels, restaurants and boutiques. Why Taylor Swift turns everything she touches into gold, what she prefers when traveling and how she raises world tourism — in the material of .

More popular than the Olympic Games

Last year, when the singer toured the United States, her concerts raised four billion dollars and caused an economic boom in the country. Then the same thing happened in Singapore and Australia. Now, the “Taylor Swift effect” has swept Europe: according to BBC News estimates, thanks to her speeches, the UK’s GDP will grow by at least one billion pounds.

The influence of the performer on tourist destinations and businesses around the world is really impressive. She mentions one of the London pubs in the song, and it immediately becomes a landmark. She releases an ode to Cornelia Street in New York and instantly turns it into a temple named after herself. She goes out in jeans of any brand — and they sell out in a matter of minutes.

At the 2024 Super Bowl, Taylor Swift appeared in a custom bracelet from the jewelry house Wove Made. During the week, the company’s website traffic increased by five thousand percent, and its sales increased by two thousand percent

According to Lighthouse, a commercial and marketing analysis platform in the field of travel and hospitality, only in Paris The Eras Tour turned out to be more popular than the upcoming Olympic Games. So, according to the number of compatriots of the star arriving in France, her performances have overtaken sports competitions five times. And the number of room bookings at the Shangri-La Paris Hotel in May increased by 120 percent compared to the same period last year. At the same time, as part of the tour, many Americans plan trips to several European countries at once.

Taylor Swift during The Eras Tour in Sydney, 2024

By mid-June, the New York luxury travel agency Embark had already organized more than 200 trips to Paris, because many Swift fans prefer to stay in luxury hotels such as Plaza Athénée, Hôtel de Crillon and Le Bristol. The Hyatt Paris Madeleine also felt the effect: the number of bookings for the singer’s tour increased there by 40 percent compared to 2023. 

Meanwhile, the best hotels in London and Edinburgh also reported a 10-35 percent increase in traffic. The Tree House Hotel in London has even come up with Swifties — special packages for Taylor fans. Luxury boutiques and restaurants near London’s Wembley Stadium, where the singer played a total of nine concerts, also spoke about the rapid flow of customers. The star herself also increased their revenue: for example, before one of the concerts, she made an order for 450 pounds at her favorite Kentish Delight diner. It includes 45 large chicken doners.

According to Tom Corbett, head of sponsorship at the financial conglomerate Barclays, the impact of Swift’s concerts on the economies of countries can only be compared with Beyonce’s Renaissance tour and the Beatlemania phenomenon of the 1960s. “Fans are increasingly striving to find a response in their personal experience, turning every concert into a celebration, every ticket into a cherished memory, and every event into an opportunity to spend money on new outfits, food and goods,” the expert explains.

“I don’t think about how they feel.”

However, the success of the performer on stage for a long time did not resonate with success in her personal life. Today, Taylor Swift’s boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs football player Travis Kelsey accompanies his beloved during The Eras Tour. It was with this tour that their story began — in July 2023, the athlete attended the singer’s concert for the first time. Then he confessed that he wanted to give her a friendship bracelet with his phone number, but he did not get the opportunity. However, in the fall, Swift was spotted in the stands of Chiefs fans next to the player’s mother Donna Kelsey. After winning the match, the pair left the stadium in a convertible.

Before Travis appeared, Taylor dated literally a dozen celebrities, but all these stormy romances quickly faded away. However, there was one plus: the exes inspired the star to create – for example, after the breakups, Swift released the hits Back to December, Owl City and All Too Well.

Taylor Swift and Joe Alvin, 2019

To be honest, I don’t think about how they feel. I was very sad at the time. But now I’m drinking mojitos with dark glasses and I don’t care. It’s really nice to be able to release an album and not get bored. Don’t take breaks between interviews to cry. I’m telling you, it’s much better this way.

Taylor Swift

In 2008, Taylor Swift began dating actor Joe Jonas, but a few months later he broke off the relationship in a 27-second phone conversation. A year later, she had a new man — actor Taylor Lautner. But it didn’t work out with him either “because of the lack of chemistry” – as well as with the star of “X—Men” Lucas Till and the actor of the series “Glee” Cory Monteith. In 2010, another shock awaited the singer — right on New Year’s Eve, actor Jake Gyllenhaal declared “that they would not succeed.”

Disappointed in men from show business, Swift began dating the grandson of American politician Robert Kennedy Connor. Paparazzi constantly caught the couple on the Kennedy family estate in Massachusetts, and then Taylor even bought a house nearby for $ 4.9 million. But the affair lasted only three months — and the house had to be sold.

The search for the love of a lifetime did not end there. Starting in 2012 and before meeting Travis Kelsey, the celebrity was in a relationship with the most eligible bachelors in Hollywood and beyond. Among them were One Direction lead singer Harry Styles, musician Calvin Harris, singer Matt Healy, actors Tom Hiddleston and Joe Alvin. But none of them managed to truly conquer the girl’s heart.

Taylor Swift with her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs football player Travis Kelsey

“She is very conscious — she can figure out any situation. I think I started falling in love with her for how sincere she is with friends, with family. When you get so much attention, it can be maddening, but she just keeps calm and common sense. That’s what I admire,” Travis Kelsey describes his beloved, on whom fans have high hopes.

“She’s comfortable in dirty shoes”

Probably, such calmness gives Taylor a love for the countryside, where she loves to spend time away from crazy fans. So for the duration of a three-day stop in the UK, she rented an apartment in a luxury country hotel in Oxfordshire, which cost her almost ten thousand pounds. This location is located close to a private airport and is ideal for her £38 million Dassault Falcon 900 aircraft. The number 13 is depicted on its nozzles — the singer assures that it brings her good luck. And she doesn’t seem to be wrong.

Taylor likes to dress up in sequins on stage, but outdoors she is comfortable in dirty shoes

anonymous source of The Sun

By the way, Taylor Swift had two 12-seat personal aircraft — the Dassault-Breguet Mystere Falcon 900 and the Dassault Falcon 50. She owned the latter for eight years and sold it in 2020 for environmental reasons. Nevertheless, the star is regularly criticized for operating the first one: the network estimated that almost 800 tons of carbon were released into the air during 170 flights.

Sometimes Swift travels around cities while on tour on premium Dreamliner buses — favorites of many celebrities, including Olivia Rodrigo, Drake, Dodgy Cat and Travis Scott. “And this is not surprising, since our buses have luxury hotel—level beds and even on-the-go recording studios,” commented Jeremy Maul, CEO of the company, proudly. He added that for The Eras Tour, the singer and her team of 190 people needed about 20 such vehicles.

For the construction of “mobile hotel rooms”, the company acquires bus hulls, in which only the dashboard, driver’s seat and steering wheel are present. They are then equipped with all modern amenities, including a living room, kitchen, bathroom, wardrobe, TV and even canopies with outdoor seating. After the conversion, one such bus will cost two million dollars, and you can rent it for 50 thousand dollars (more than four million rubles) per month. This price also includes driver services, fuel, cleaning and Wi-Fi.

In concert venues, the pop star prefers to spend time on a special scale and does not skimp on expensive hotels. American journalist Christopher Parr, who is among the top ten authors in the field of luxury travel according to USA Today, named five of Swift’s favorite hotels. The first place in her rating is occupied by The Savoy in London on the banks of the Thames, where you can spend the night for a thousand dollars. The famous Beaufort bar is located within its walls, which is mentioned in several of the singer’s lyrics.

The Savoy Hotel in London

The second position is occupied by Greenwich, a New York hotel with a Japanese—style spa and a Michelin-starred Shibui restaurant. You will have to pay 1.2 thousand dollars for one night in this place. Next on the list are the Amangiri resort in the reserve of the American state of Utah (four thousand dollars per night), the Hôtel de Crillon in Paris (two thousand dollars per night) and the so—called Blackberry farm in Tennessee, located in the mountains near Swift’s house (2.3 thousand dollars).

“We felt the ground tremble under our feet”

Fox News journalists associate the singer with the revival of the gig tripping trend (“trips for concerts”): now, when planning a vacation, tourists are guided not only by the desire to visit the sights of a particular country, but also by concerts of their favorite performers.

“I’ve just booked a family tour of Europe entirely dedicated to Taylor Swift. My client wanted to see The Eras Tour with her daughters, but they couldn’t get tickets to the USA. Then they turned to her international shows and were able to get seats in Milan,” said Tim Elrod, Vice president and travel consultant at Travelmation.

His colleague, Adam Duckworth, founder of Travelmation, confirmed this and said that now traveling to concerts is one of the hottest trends in travel, and in many ways this is due to Taylor Swift. “We have clients who book trips all over the world just to see her. Gone are the days when people watched their idols at local venues. Now they are ready to travel as much as necessary for the sake of energetic shows,” he added.

According to Skyscanner, 44 percent of Americans are willing to fly short distances to see their favorite artists, and 18 percent will make every effort to get on long—haul flights

Fans crowd outside the Friends arena in Stockholm before Taylor Swift’s concert, May 2024

And this is not surprising: because of the powerful energy of Taylor Swift’s shows, they practically provoke seismic activity. In 2023, during two concerts at the Lumen Field stadium in Seattle, the singer’s forfeits caused tremors equivalent to an earthquake of magnitude 2.3. A similar phenomenon, which was called the “Beast Earthquake”, was recorded in the same city 12 years earlier, during a football match. “Taylor’s concert was like nothing else,— CNN journalist Chloe Melas, who attended the event, shared her impressions at the time. — We literally felt the ground shaking under our feet. My ears are still ringing.”

In the same year, Taylor Swift became the first musician in history to be awarded the title of “Person of the Year” by Time magazine. In the fight for this title, she beat King Charles III of Great Britain, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and even a Barbie doll. “There is light and darkness in every year; a significant proportion of 2023 was darkness. In a divided world where too many institutions fail, Taylor Swift has found a way to transcend boundaries and become a source of light,” Time justified her decision.

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