Is Your Next Conference Taylor Swift-Proof?

Chances are if your event is taking place in a city that’s on the Eras Tour schedule it’s not

With Taylor Swift’s highly anticipated Eras Tour continuing through 2024, cities hosting her concerts have been experiencing a surge in hotel demand and higher prices. According to stats compiled by STR, a hospitality data benchmarking, analytics and marketplace insights firm, the tour dates are leading to a spike in bookings — which means higher room rates for everybody.

Statistics for the first three months of the tour shows that it added $98.2 million in room revenue to the U.S. hotel industry. The U.S. leg of the tour began in mid-March of last year and STR analyzed hotel performance for the nights of the first 28 shows held in 10 different cities. Most of those cities hosted three shows from Friday through Sunday, which coincidentally is also the room night pattern of many conferences and meetings. Stats for the second three months of the tour where even more impressive generating an impact of $208 million in additional U.S. hotel room revenue.

Room Rates Even More Impressive Than Occupancy

For context, the $98 million additional revenue figure is almost equal to an entire week of room revenue in Los Angeles—one of the largest markets in the country. Another way of looking at it, the Swift tour room revenue surplus matched what the five largest U.S. markets combined to sell in a single day (2023 average). While high occupancy levels were seen for most of the host markets, the bigger driver of top-line gains was higher average daily rate (ADR).

Even in tour markets that saw more moderate occupancy, such as Philadelphia, Boston and Dallas/Fort Worth, there was a widespread lift in ADR despite there not being an extreme shortage of available rooms. To put the impact into further context, $208 million is basically the combined room revenue generated in New York City and Philadelphia in one week. Another way to look at it, $208 million is the average daily room revenue reported by the country’s 17 largest markets.

While that makes the total U.S. impact modest, many host markets experienced unprecedented windfall beyond baseline levels. Two markets—Pittsburgh and Nashville—doubled their revenue per available room (RevPAR) from shoulder weeks. Eight markets overall reported RevPAR premiums of 50% or higher.

What can’t be measured on top of that impact are extended fan stays, extra lift stemming from show advance/breakdown crews, the broad range of other economic activities beyond concert-night room revenues, or added impact on other hotel revenue streams, like P&L, parking, etc. which also can impact a meeting or event attendee experience.

Impacts Felt in More Than Immediate Venue Area

Eight of the 20 concert markets included submarkets that more than doubled their RevPAR performance. Both Pittsburgh’s and Minneapolis’ central business districts, for example, posted RevPAR two-and-a-half times above normal. But many other submarkets well beyond the immediate vicinity of the concert venue showed one-of-a-kind gains.

Here are the list of cities still on the calendar for the Eras Tour. If your event is scheduled to be there the same time, be prepared to deal with armies of Swifties.

Europe
Netherlands: Amsterdam – July 4-6, 2024
Switzerland: Zurich – July 9-10, 2024
Italy: Milan – July 13-14, 2024
Germany: Hamburg – July 23-24, 2024:; Munich – July 27-28, 2024; Gelsenkirchen – July 17-19, 2024
Poland: Warsaw – August 1-3, 2024
Austria: Vienna – August 8-10, 2024
United Kingdom: London — August 15-20, 2024

North America
U.S.: Miami Gardens — October 10-20, 2024; New Orleans — October 25-27;
Indianapolis — November 1-3
Canada: Toronto — November 14-23; Vancouver — December 6-8

No shows are scheduled for 2025.

Any thoughts, opinions, or news? Please share them with me at vince@meetingsevents.com.

Photo by: Ronald S Woan, CC BY-SA 2.0

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