Dive Brief:
- The Taylor Swift effect on hotel markets is real, according to JLL, which found that the singer’s Eras Tour drives elevated RevPAR in the hotel markets it touches.
- RevPAR in destinations that have hosted Eras Tour stops have outperformed the global average by 490 basis points, equivalent to nearly $1 billion in incremental room revenue, JLL noted in a report obtained by Hotel Dive.
- The Eras Tour’s final leg kicked off in Miami on Friday, and future stops are in Indianapolis, Miami, New Orleans, Toronto and Vancouver through early December. JLL expects hotels in those markets to generate similar upside as ones in markets where the tour previously stopped.
Dive Insight:
When looking at a hotel market’s RevPAR for the month of its Eras Tour date as compared to the same month in 2019, the markets that saw the largest percent increases during the Eras Tour were Edinburgh, Paris, Madrid, Las Vegas and Milan.
Other U.S. cities among the top 15 hotel markets with the biggest Eras Tour revenue boosts were Phoenix; Tampa, Florida; and Kansas City, Missouri.
The “Swift Lift” has been impacting hotel markets since the Eras Tour began in the spring of last year. Between June and August 2023 alone, the tour brought in $208 million of additional U.S. hotel room revenue, according to an STR report from last September.
The STR report found that, during that time, weekend Eras Tour shows raised market occupancy performance above baselines by 9.8 percentage points, and Sunday shows resulted in a 14.5 percentage point occupancy boost.
Large-scale events also boosted hotel performance in the fourth quarter of 2023, such as Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour, according to a report from Amadeus.
Another 2023 study by QuestionPro found Eras Tour concertgoers were spending, on average, about $1,300 per show, inclusive of tickets and travel, projecting that if that amount were to hold steady, the tour “will have generated an estimated $5 billion in economic impact, more than the gross domestic product of 50 countries” by its end.
The U.S. Travel Association called this projection “a lowball figure,” saying the association believes total economic impact will likely exceed $10 billion when including “indirect spending” around the events.
Last June, Eras Tour Chicago dates helped the city’s hotels break their all-time record for weekend occupancy, according to the Chicago Sun Times.
