Lauren Brown grew up in Collingwood, Ont., listening to Taylor Swift but never had the chance to see her in concert. When the Eras Tour was announced, the 25-year-old family therapist hoped that opportunity had finally arrived, but she failed to score tickets for any of the superstar’s North American dates.
Resale tickets for the Toronto shows cost a minimum of $2,000, and $7,000 or more for good seats. Desperate, Brown signed up online for an early access code for shows in Britain. This time she got lucky and bought tickets for Swift’s June concert in Liverpool.
Tickets in hand, Brown and her partner, Julian Lankstead, 26, built a 15-day European vacation around the concert. The couple visited family in England and flew to Portugal. “The Liverpool tickets were more affordable, even with travel, than resale in Canada,” Brown says.
“Plus, we were able to take a trip and visit a country we had never been to before.” Brown’s Swiftian vacation is an example of “event tourism” – any trip prompted by attendance to a concert, sporting event or festival. The Eras Tour, which hits Toronto and Vancouver in November and December, has triggered so much travel it’s been dubbed the “Taylor tourism effect.
” A June, 2023, study by QuestionPro found the tour likely generated US$5-billion for the American economy, with Eras concertgoers spending around US$1,300 each on travel, tickets and merchandise. “Event tourism has always been popular, but it has exploded in re.
