Taylor Swift is a ‘Mastermind’ whose magic touch has proven to go beyond the music world. True, the global superstar has accumulated countless awards to her name, going as far as even smashing her own streaming records. But outside the realm of music numbers and accolades, the 34-year-old Miss Americana’s influence has sparked change across multiple industries, such as getting Apple Music to revoke its policy to offer artists better compensation or greatly increasing US voter registration with a mere Instagram post. The list continues – enough to garner her the TIME’s Person of the Year 2023 title.

So great is her celebrity power that five high-profile films changed their release dates to avoid clashing with Swift’s self-funded blockbuster ‘The Eras Tour’ movie. It has since been declared the highest-grossing film in box office history, earning more than US$261.6 million globally. The tour’s success was probably foreshadowed before it even started when it broke Ticketmaster during the US presale chaos, leading to both fans and the US Department of Justice suing the major ticketing platform. That wasn’t all Taylor Swift and The Eras Tour broke. The travel industry and all the fortunate cities that would play host to the tour began to see an economic shift, an unnerving passion and planeloads of Swifties (the affectionate term for Swift’s fans) willing to (literally) go the distance.

The Taylor Swift Effect

The Eras Tour officially surpassed US$1 billion in sales in November 2023, becoming the highest-grossing tour of all time and further cementing her billionaire status. It was planned out to be a five-continent concert extravaganza with over 150 shows and kicked off in March 2023, with the first leg taking place in the US. Market research company QuestionPro’s survey evaluated that the tour could generate approximately US$5 billion for the US economy, with concertgoers spending roughly US$1,300 per show on hotels, travel, food, and merchandise.

Mastercard Economic Institute reported that hotel expenditure increased by 47 per cent while spending at restaurants within a 4km radius of her concert stadium rose by 68 per cent daily. However, the US Travel Association estimated that the figure could have reached US$10 billion in terms of total economic impact by the end of the tour. “If Taylor Swift were an economy, she’d be bigger than 50 countries,” said Dan Fleetwood, President of QuestionPro.

From fully booked hotels to increasing sales for local businesses, all 53 shows in the US saw the rippling effect of The Eras Tour. This zeitgeist had countless names: Swiftonomics, Taylornomics, ‘Swift surge’, ‘Swift lift’, and ‘Swift bump’. It was no glitch, and soon, politicians, too, wanted a slice of that economic gold pie. From Chilean President Gabriel Boric to Mayor of Budapest Gergely Karácsony to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, political leaders made public statements inviting Swift to visit their cities and perform. It worked in Canada because she swiftly added three Vancouver dates and six for Toronto, projected to generate spin-off effects as high as C$700 million.

This ‘Taylor Swift effect’ followed the ‘Fortnight’ singer through all the other countries she would visit on her tour. Due to the intense demand – added to the Ticketmaster fiasco – fans were willing to do whatever it took to get their hands on tickets. Some opted for overseas shows where tickets were more accessible and cheaper – by almost 87 per cent for the European tour compared to the US tickets. Plus, they had the extra incentive of visiting a new country. Fans term it a Swiftcation.

This was especially so if the chairman of The Tortured Poets Department was making exclusive stops in certain regions, such as Australia for Oceania, Tokyo alone for Asia, and Singapore for Southeast Asia. Air New Zealand, for example, had to add 14 more flights to accommodate 3,000 more people, while Vietnam reported that flights to Singapore from Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh were sold out during the dates of her shows. The trend continues as Swift is now shaking it off across Europe, where she recently confirmed on her 100th show that the tour will wrap up on December 8 in Vancouver.

According to online travel company Expedia, the continent-hopping Swifties and their Swiftcations are essentially ‘tour tourism’, a pattern first observed during Beyoncé’s ‘Renaissance’ world tour. “They said, ’Wait a minute, I can either spend US$1,500 to go see my favourite artist in Miami, or I can take that US$1,500 and buy a concert ticket, a round-trip plane ticket, and three nights in a hotel room,” said Melanie Fish, an Expedia spokesperson and travel expert.

Hotels’ Best Performance

Imagine a city hitting an unprecedented record of 96.8 per cent occupancy rate for a single weekend. That was what happened when The Eras Tour stopped by Chicago in June 2023. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia even credited Swift’s tour for the city’s strongest month for hotel revenue when the tour visited in May 2023. Two nights of the concert in March 2023 was enough for Las Vegas to reach 94.5 per cent hotel occupancy – the last time it was this high, at 94.8 per cent, was in February 2020, before the pandemic hit. In Stockholm, the only Scandinavian stop on The Eras Tour, 40,000 hotel rooms are sold out despite the price surges.

Short-term rentals aren’t exempt from the Swift effect, either. According to Airbnb, searches for the UK cities where the 1989 singer will perform have also increased by an average of 337 per cent since tickets went on sale. In Vienna, the number of nights booked for the duration of Swift’s visit was up by 430 per cent compared to the same period in 2023.

Thematic Tourism Marketing

What would you do when one of the most significant international superstars comes to your city? The City of Glendale in the US renamed itself to ‘Swift City’. California’s Santa Clara made Swift its honorary mayor. Chicago’s Willis Tower lit itself in the colours of some of Swift’s albums. But surely, that can’t beat Rio de Janeiro’s welcome, where the image of a ‘Junior Jewels’ inspired shirt from Swift’s ‘You Belong with Me’ music video was projected onto the world-famous 125-foot Christ the Redeemer statue. While it was a grand gesture that even Swift admitted was “sort of the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me”, the stunt was made possible with the charitable acts of local Swifties and the assistance of Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes. In exchange for the projection, fans crowdfunded 180,000 reais (about US$37,000) in a single day to purchase food and water to distribute to Rio’s homeless communities.

Elsewhere, tourism agencies like Australia’s took to social media to market some of their cities’ best attractions in tune with the colours of The Eras Tour while Visit Stockholm curated a ‘Welcome to Swiftholm’ guide. Destination Toronto similarly published Eras-focused itineraries. Local attractions also participated in hopes of drawing the crowd to visit, which, in turn, would easily yield social media content and promotion for these places. Melbourne’s iconic Flinders Street Station glowed with a ‘Welcome to Melbourne Swifties’ projection from dusk till midnight. Singapore took the opportunity to promote their upgraded airport, beckoning Swift to see “the new forest” since her last visit to the island. Not to mention, Jewel Changi Airport hosted a singalong night at the aforementioned Shiseido Forest Valley, which was attended by over 1,000 Swifties.

Earlier on, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville quickly put together a Taylor Swift pop-up exhibit to coincide with her May 2023 tour visit. It included outfits from Swift’s music video, the cap and gown she wore when she received her honorary doctorate in fine arts from New York University. A whopping 114,000 tickets were sold, making it the museum’s best month in 65 years. CEO Kyle Young exclaimed, “For the first time ever, we sold the doggone place out.”

Local Business and Simple Swiftonomics

Everything, or in this case, everywhere Swift touches, turns to gold, so it made economic sense that the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) would provide a grant to make it ‘the 1’ Southeast Asian stop on The Eras Tour. According to Channel News Asia, the figure is between US$2 million and US$3 million in total for all six shows. Consider that amount against the potential S$300 million (US$225 million) to S$400 million added to Singapore’s economy, as estimated by economists.

For Melbourne, the revenue potentially exceeded the estimated A$1.2 billion (US$787 million) in economic value. Mitsumasa Etou, a research site Economic Effects NET representative, told Channel News Asia that The Eras Tour in Tokyo could have generated up to 34.1 billion yen (US$226.8 million). Los Angeles reportedly saw US$320 million in incremental business sales, 3,300 jobs and an additional US$160 million in local wages. It’s all easy math.

Local businesses soon saw opportunities to craft Swift-related events or activations to increase sales or at least gain publicity. The city of Cincinnati witnessed almost US$48 million worth of spending during the tour’s stop. Nearly 41,000 people attended Taygate, an event where complimentary hair braiding and glitter makeup were offered for the show. Nearby waffle restaurant Taste of Belgium added ‘Lavender Haze’ cocktails as a nod to one of Swift’s songs. They said it was the best two days of sales in seven years. Minneapolis’ doughnut shop, Glam Doll Donuts, sold 150 boxes of Taylor-Swift-themed doughnuts that caused such fanfare that they had to stop taking orders as they couldn’t keep up.

Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands organised a whole Taylor Swift experience, from hotel packages to a light and water show to a trail of installations across the property. There was a (cruel) Summer Night Market and an Eras boat cruise in Melbourne, among others. A restaurant in Stockholm curated a ‘Taylor Swift brunch experience’, complete with a karaoke stage, while another venue held an all-ages, all-day party with a Swift-themed quiz. As Swift makes her way to the UK, fans attended Europe’s first Taylor Swift conference in Kent, while Liverpool crafted an experiential ‘The Taylor Town Trail’ from June 8 to 16.

Meanwhile, some companies have taken it further by offering travel experiences and packages. Contiki, a European-based travel planner specially marketed for the 18-35-year-old age group (coincidentally Swift’s core fan demographic), has ‘Taylor Your Contiki’ packages for five particular cities hosting The Eras Tour. Centred around Swift’s tour dates, the itineraries offer nine to 14 additional travel days to popular attractions in the participating cities. The difference is that you’ll be travelling with like-minded Swifties, and there’ll be singalongs on buses, friendship bracelet-making kits provided, and optional visits to relevant sites in Paris and London. “The idea is that they will either start following the night of the show or end before she takes the stage,” Lottie Norman, Contiki’s chief marketing officer, told Thrillist.

When the European leg of her tour ends on August 20, an unofficial Taylor Swift-themed cruise awaits. Setting sail on October 21 from Miami to the Bahamas for four nights, the company behind it has worked with Royal Caribbean for the event and is actually sold out.

Whether tour tourism will continue after The Eras Tour concludes is anyone’s guess. Still, the Taylor Swift effect could outshine even the demand and impact of large-scale international sporting events like the upcoming Paris 2024 Olympics. “For every one Olympic booking we’re doing, we’ve done five Taylor Swift bookings,” Jack Ezon, founder of luxury travel agency Embark Beyond, told Forbes. His reasoning is that the cost of a three-day Taylor Swift weekend is four times less than the cost of a seven-day Olympic trip.

Who’s afraid of little old Taylor Swift and The Eras Tour? You should be. Her Midas touch remains… dazzling.