What Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour Says About ‘Passion Tourism’

Taylor Swift’s European tour was the most important thing for Nikita Rao when planning the destination for her family’s annual summer vacation.

Rao, her husband and two children, who live in Bethesda, Maryland, went abroad last weekend: they have tickets for the pop star’s concert in Amsterdam on Thursday.

The family built a week-long itinerary around the Eras Tour event, spending a few days in London before heading to the Netherlands for the show. They probably would have visited the two cities at some point in the future, but the Swift concert sped up their timeline, said Rao, 43, who also saw a performance in Cincinnati last year with her daughter.

“My view was, we have to do this – London and Amsterdam – because she will be there,” Rao said. “If I can get tickets, it will make the whole holiday great,” she said of her thought process.

It’s not just the Rao family.

Americans are flocking abroad to see Taylor Swift, perhaps the most prominent recent example of so-called “passion tourism,” according to travel experts.

Passion tourism is (unsurprisingly) about people’s passions. While the place is generally important, so are these trips overall guided by personal interest, hobby or a cultural event, experts say.

This is not a new concept. In fact, there are many recent and future examples: the annual February Carnival festival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; April’s total solar eclipse in North America; the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris starting this month; and the ongoing UEFA European Football Championship (known as the Euro Cup) in Germany.

“Memorable events drive travel trends, whether concerts or sporting events,” Mastercard wrote recently in its annual travel trends report.

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What sets Taylor Swift concerts apart in the passion tourism space, however, is the widespread interest and enthusiasm among Americans looking to travel abroad, travel agents say.

“I’ve never seen such excitement about traveling to see an artist,” says Jessica Griscavage, travel consultant and founder of Runway Travel.

The most recent example that might come close is a Spice Girls concert in the 1990s, she said.

Griscavage, who put together the Rao family’s itinerary, also put together a separate Swift-centered trip to Paris for a daughter, mother and grandmother. Â Â Â

More than half of Americans, 53%, identify as fans by Taylor Swift, according to a Morning Consult poll. About 16% consider themselves ‘ardent’ fans.

“Beyoncé is big too, but we don’t usually get requests like, ‘I have Beyoncé tickets for Europe and we want to build a trip around it,’” says Sofia Markovich, travel consultant and founder of Sofia’s Travel. .

She collected trips for two American clients who had tickets to Taylor Swift shows in England and Switzerland respectively.

“Just as Grateful Dead fans were known to follow the band from city to city to be part of a unique community, Swifties — often with friends and family in tow — have made traveling to its concerts part of the experience ,” Joshua Friedlander, vice president of research at the US Travel Association, wrote recently about the so-called ‘Swift Lift’.

About 15.9 million Americans traveled internationally in the first quarter of 2024, a record high according to Mastercard’s travel report. Consumers are also spending on travel at record levels worldwide, the report said.

Passion tourism generally provides an economic boost to host countries, experts say.

For example, tourist spending in restaurants, bars and supermarkets during the 2024 Carnival in Rio was 156% above normal, Mastercard found. During the eclipse, hotel sales within the U.S. path of totality increased 71%, the report said.

According to a recent analysis by Barclays, around 1.2 million fans will see a Taylor Swift concert in four cities in the UK (Edinburgh, Liverpool, Cardiff and London) this summer. Any fan will spending an average of £848 (about $1,073) on tickets, travel, accommodation, outfits and other expenses, totaling 997 million British pounds (about $1.3 billion), Barclays estimates.

According to Barclays’ analysis, accommodation is responsible for the biggest spend, after tickets, followed by travel.

Searches for Airbnb stays in European cities during Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour dates are up about 70% compared to the same period in 2023, a recent analysis shows.

Rome and Paris are traditionally among the top destinations for Americans to visit abroad. However, it is “inevitable” that Swift fans will end up in a city they have previously overlooked, such as Edinburgh, says Christopher Nulty, global head of corporate communications and public affairs at Airbnb.

When tickets for concert dates in Edinburgh went on sale last year, searches for accommodation in the city by Americans rose 500%, Nulty said.

A concert “combines the opportunity to travel to an incredible place with the opportunity to see an artist they love,” he said.

The household economics of ticket sales also likely play a role, experts said. Some Swifties priced out of the US market due to ticket costs generally find it cheaper (or comparably priced) to buy a ticket and add the associated travel costs to a concert abroad.

“Europe’s resale tickets are much more reasonable than those in the U.S.,” says travel consultant Griscavage.

Plus, “I think there’s something really exciting about seeing her in a non-American city,” she added. “It’s a fun opportunity and people are willing to pay to see her.”