How Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour allowed Asia Pacific hotels to achieve their “wildest dreams”
Taylor Swift kicked off the second international leg of her wildly successful Eras Tour in early February, and Asia Pacific hoteliers were, in fact, “ready for it”. The seventeen-night leg gave a much-needed performance boost to Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne, and Singapore hotels.
The opening act
Swift announced the first set of Asia Pacific tour dates on 20 June 2023, but followed up one week later with additional nights across Sydney, Melbourne, and Singapore.
Occupancy on the books for the concert nights started to climb almost immediately post-announcement, with optimistic fans “living for the hope of it all” and booking rooms a few weeks prior to ticket sales.
Booking pace had a modest impact, if any, on actualized occupancy. Market size and total possible attendance played larger roles in determining actualized occupancy, although at seven percentage points, the variance between market occupancy wasn’t significant.
The main event
Year-over-year RevPAR growth spiked across all four markets on concert nights, driven primarily by ADR, as is common with large events.
For these four high-demand markets, limited occupancy growth is an issue, caused by the 100% occupancy ceiling. Actualized occupancy over concert dates ranged from 83.8% over four nights in Tokyo to 90.8% across six nights in Singapore.
While Swift’s tour improved hotel performance across all markets, submarkets closest to the stadiums benefited most, with Marina Bay (+70%), Sydney West (+65%), and Tokyo East/Asakura/Ochanomizu/Ueno (+61%) reporting the strongest year-over-year RevPAR growth during the corresponding concert periods.
Melbourne varied slightly, in that Melbourne Centre, where the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) is found, reported 118% RevPAR growth, just below Melbourne East’s 132% gain. In this case, price was a likely factor, as rooms in Melbourne East sold for 30% less than those in the city center.
Room cost was certainly a factor in concertgoer hotel selection: Tokyo East, the submarket closest to the Tokyo Dome, reported the highest occupancy (88.5%) and highest ADR growth (+55%) of all six submarkets, but the lowest actualized rate.
In their concert era
Global buzz surrounding the Eras Tour raised hoteliers’ hopes that Swift would fulfill their “wildest dreams”, as all four tour stops have contended with challenges to industry performance in recent months.
Melbourne and Singapore reported both the largest year-over-year RevPAR growth for Eras Tour dates in APAC and the greatest variance between show nights and all other nights. Robust supply growth is the common denominator for these markets, as new openings have stifled KPI growth in recent months.
In Q4 2023, Melbourne supply increased 5.9% year over year and rates declined 4.7%, while Singapore reported 4.6% supply growth and an 8.0% occupancy loss over the aforementioned period. Swift’s influence is evident in Melbourne’s 79% ADR growth over tour nights, which at AUD415, is comparable to the long-standing Formula 1 race held each spring.
Singapore’s 19% occupancy gain over the six concert nights, a 21 percentage-point advantage over the 1.5% year-over-year decline reported in February 2024, further reflects the tour’s impact.
Competing events
Tokyo and Sydney reported both softer year-over-year RevPAR gains relative to the first two markets, and lesser variance between the Eras Tour and other comparable nights, largely due to competing events.
If Swift had one missed opportunity in Asia Pacific, it was playing “New Year’s Day” on night four in Tokyo. The final night of the Tokyo leg, 10 February 2024, coincided with Lunar New Year, a massive celebration across Asia and hugely popular leisure travel period.
Many countries, including China, Japan, and Thailand, offer one to two weeks of public holiday beginning on New Year’s Day. As a result, leisure demand in Tokyo typically swells in the weeks following the holiday. The influx of Lunar New Year tourism, which began around the same time as the concerts, reduced the variance between Eras nights and the rest of February.
For Sydney, events held in 2023 obscured Swift’s impact on hotel performance. Last year, Sydney hosted the biennial WorldPride 2023 celebration, which ran from 17 February through 5 March 2023 and coincided with the market’s annual Mardi Gras and Pride celebrations.
More directly, the first two nights of the Eras tour fell on the same nights as Ed Sheeran’s popular Mathematics tour in 2023. RevPAR growth for the four-night Eras stint clocked in at 41%, but excluding the first two nights, RevPAR rose 68% year over year.
Post-concert buzz
Taylor Swift played her final night in Singapore almost exactly one year after the Eras Tour kicked off in Glendale, AZ, but it’s not time to “shake it off” just yet. The 51-stop European leg will commence on 9 May in Paris, ending on 20 August in London. Swift will then make her way back to North America to perform across the U.S. and Canada.
The year of completed shows across the U.S., Latin America, and Asia Pacific provides European hoteliers with a unique advantage to anticipating tour stop impacts.
Booking pace is strong across most markets, as might be expected given the ticket sales and actualized performance across other legs. Total possible attendance and market size will be the biggest determinants for actualized occupancy, and comparable dates in 2023 will play a role in ADR growth.
*Analysis by Kelsey Fenerty.
Note: All figures reported in local currency.
About STR
STR provides premium data benchmarking, analytics and marketplace insights for the global hospitality industry. Founded in 1985, STR maintains a presence in 15 countries with a North American headquarters in Hendersonville, Tennessee, an international headquarters in London, and an Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore. STR was acquired in October 2019 by CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGP), the leading provider of commercial real estate information, analytics and online marketplaces. For more information, please visit str.com and costargroup.com.
