Taylor Swift drove international visitors down under for February concerts

Flight booking data shows an “extraordinary increase in interest for cities” featured on the singer’s tour itinerary.

Taylor Swift is not only driving domestic tourism with her concert dates but international travel as fans fly from across the Tasman to see her perform. Picture: Michael Tran/AFP

Pop sensation Taylor Swift is not only driving domestic tourism with her Australian concert dates but international travel as fans fly in from overseas to see her perform.

Data collected by Amadeus which provides flight booking systems for airlines and travel agents, showed an “extraordinary increase in interest for cities” featured on the singer’s tour itinerary.

In Australia, the volume of flight searches for Sydney and Melbourne peaked in the last week of June, when tickets to Taylor Swift concerts went on sale. The star will perform at seven sold-out concerts in Melbourne and Sydney from Feb 16 to 26 next year.

Week-on-week flight searches were up 44 per cent with most travellers looking for trips of a few days rather than longer stays.

Interest from across the Tasman was even greater, with flight searches up an impressive 240 per cent in late June, compared to previous weeks.

Amadeus observed that the length and timing of the trip being searched, indicated the concerts “significantly impacted leisure travel booking over business travel during the same period”.

There were similar responses to other Taylor Swift concerts in Singapore and Tokyo, with plenty of interest from neighbouring countries including Australia, Indonesia and South Korea.

US pop star Taylor Swift performs at Sofi Stadium in Inglewood, California. Picture: Michael Tran/AFP

Australian Travel Industry Association chief executive Dean Long said it had been a long time since they had seen an event with as much interest as the Taylor Swift tour.

“We know major events are an incredible driver of demand because they create the urgency to book and convert, and really there’s no other demand driver that does that, at that level,” Mr Long said.

“Having said that, I don’t know how many other global superstars would get the same bump (in travel) at a domestic and international level. Taylor Swift has been able to do something which we haven’t seen in recent memory which is to get people booking and travelling.”

He said it was not surprising to see the surge in other nationalities heading to Sydney or Melbourne for her concert, as well as Australians travelling to Japan given the demand for tickets.

“If people couldn’t get tickets locally, they said ‘we want to see this concert and that’s where we’ve got to go’,” Mr Long said.

Accommodation Australia CEO Michael Johnson said the Taylor Swift tour was proving to be a “sugar hit” for the industry with thousands of rooms booked.

He said many hopeful concert goers secured accommodation even before they bought tickets, to lock in the best price possible.

“When you’ve got superstars such as Taylor Swift on tour they are just huge generators of demand for accommodation,” Mr Johnson said.

“We anticipate the hotels in the locations where Taylor is playing to be full every night while she’s on which will be great.”

As well as intrastate and interstate travellers, international visitors were booking Sydney and Melbourne hotels in mid to late February “especially New Zealanders”, he said.

“New Zealanders love to come to events in the eastern states,” Mr Johnson said.

“It’s fairly accessible for them and they will put a few good days around it, do some extra shopping and take in the sights.”

While room rates would always be higher during a major event, Mr Johnson said that was the way the industry operated.

“Hotels operate 12-months of the year, and they have peaks and they have troughs,” he said.

“In the peaks they make good money and in the troughs they either break even or they lose money. Gone are the days of yesteryear when you chose a rate and that’s what you sold every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night. We’re a very dynamic industry.”