Gloomy consumer spending? Taylor Swift will shake it off
Hundreds of millions of dollars will flow through the Australian economy when Taylor Swift comes to Sydney and Melbourne.
Fans have bought 620,000 tickets, Qantas has added 11,000 seats and one hotel alone has ordered 2000 bottles of champagne – such is the power of Swiftonomics.
Taylor Swift, this generation’s biggest pop star, is headed to Australia with her globetrotting Eras tour and fans are gearing up to throw mountains of cash at the event. Swift will hold seven shows in Australia starting in two weeks – three in Melbourne at the MCG from February 16 to 18 and four at Sydney’s Accor Stadium from February 23 to 26.
Previous cities to host Swift have seen remarkable sugar hits of commerce. Last year, the Philadelphia office of the US Federal Reserve said the state had had the “strongest month for hotel revenue … since the onset of the pandemic, in large part due to an influx of guests for the Taylor Swift concerts in the city”.
Ticket sales alone have sparked a bonanza of consumer spending (and tears, as hundreds of thousands missed out). Promoter Frontier Touring declined to provide details but a conservative estimate – based on the shows being sold out and ticket prices – puts total sales at $120m.
The number of seats sold is enough for almost one in every 40 Australians to attend a show.
Venues NSW has previously estimated the concerts would generate about $136m in economic activity. “An event like Taylor Swift attracts significant interstate and international visitation, which means that people actually come and they stay at hotels or Airbnb,” Venues NSW chief Kerrie Mather said. “They actually go out to dinner, they go to bars and restaurants.”
Venues NSW has also previously said that it estimated $60m in merchandise sales.
Qantas saw a 1500 per cent increase in domestic bookings when Swift tickets went on sale in the middle of last year. To meet this demand, Qantas has scheduled an extra 66 flights – more than 11,000 seats – to and from the host cities.
Internationally, the carrier scheduled eight more flights to and from Christchurch and eight more servicing Wellington.
Domestically, it has scheduled 24 flights between Sydney and Melbourne, 20 flights to and from Adelaide, and six between Sydney and Perth.
Air New Zealand also got in on the action, naming some of its flights NZ1989, in homage to Swift’s 1989 album. It scheduled more than 2000 extra seats, with additional flights from Wellington, Christchurch, and Auckland.
Hotels industry data firm STR said Melbourne occupancy rates for the Friday and Saturday of the concerts were at 83 per cent, and Sydney occupancy rates for the Friday and Saturday nights of the concerts were 79 and 84 per cent respectively.
Concerts partner Crown said its Melbourne Crown Towers were at 97 per cent occupancy for that weekend, and it was expecting its Sydney Crown Towers to be booked out by the time the concerts came around. It said it expected 2000 champagne bottles to be consumed in its Melbourne facilities during the concert week.
Smaller vendors are getting a slice of the pie too: the Oz Jet Boating business in Sydney Harbour – where patrons pay to skip across the water in a high-speed boat – has been holding Taylor Swift singalong rides, some of which had sold out, according to the website.
“I panic bought the cheapest VIP ones after 1½ hours of waiting in the queue, because that’s all that was available by then,” she said.
For the concert, Moloney is making a dress to replicate the snake-embroidered catsuit worn by Swift for her Reputation era.