With four months to go until the final show of Taylor Swift’s “The Erasu Tour,” short-term rentals and hotel rooms are nearly all full for her Indianapolis show in early November, with most ticket buyers being out-of-town fans.
In what could be a record-breaking year for tourism in Indianapolis, demand for hotels and short-term rentals in the city has been extremely high throughout the year due to large one-off events such as the NBA All-Star Game in February, the total solar eclipse in April and the Olympic swimming trials in June.
But nothing coming to Indianapolis in 2024 is likely to draw crowds as big as the hundreds of thousands of Swifties who will play three consecutive sold-out nights at Lucas Oil Stadium in November.
Chris Gahl, vice president of the Indianapolis Tourism Board, said hotel rooms in the city are nearly sold out for that weekend, at three times the price of 2023.
“87% of the people clutching tickets to walk into Lucas Oil Stadium for a concert [metropolitan area,] This is another strong tourism indicator,” Gahl said.
Gahl said bookings for short-term rentals are up 207% compared to the same weekend last year.
According to Airbnb’s announcement about the impact of the Swift concert, the Circle City saw a 7,000% increase in searches for short-term Airbnb rentals over the first weekend of November compared to last year. By comparison, Indianapolis saw a 2,000% increase in Airbnb during the solar eclipse.
A spike in searches can help estimate how many people are considering traveling to a city during a specific date range. Airbnb doesn’t track booking or occupancy rates because supply can spike as the dates approach, and most short-term rentals can be canceled just a few days before your stay.
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The stats highlight the strength of Swift’s “passion tourism,” in which fans travel great distances to see their favorite artists. Airbnb spokesman Haven Thorne said thousands of Americans have traveled to see Swift perform in Europe, where tickets tend to be cheaper and more readily available.
“They’re more interested in the what than the where, and they’re traveling for Taylor Swift,” Thorne said. “Americans made up more than a third of Airbnb bookings in Europe during her tour.”
All three Indianapolis shows at the 70,000-capacity Lucas Oil Stadium sold out almost immediately, with more than 200,000 fans attending Swift’s final U.S. concerts over the weekend.
The spike in searches in Indianapolis is 14 times larger than searches for rental properties in Miami, where searches increased 500 percent during the weekend of Swift’s October performances, and double the spike for her final show of 2024 in Vancouver.
Hotel rates over $500 a night for Swift concert weekend
The frenzy of concert-goers booking lodging is causing headaches for even the most meticulously planned trips for Swifties.
Gracie Smith had already seen Taylor Swift live last year, and when the Atlanta native announced she’d be performing some more shows in the US at the end of 2024, she knew she had to see her again.
After convincing his sister, cousin and aunt to accompany him to Indianapolis, Smith searched for a hotel within walking distance of the stadium since he wouldn’t have access to a car for the weekend, eventually settling on a downtown Sheraton for $457 a night, more than Smith had initially budgeted.
Then in January, the group’s rooms were suddenly cancelled, and a review of their bank statements revealed they had never been charged for the rooms.
Frantic, Smith and her relatives called the hotel every day for a month seeking an explanation, and Marriott eventually offered them rooms at another hotel it owns, the Courtyard Marriott near Victory Field.
The new rooms were about $120 more per night, bringing the hotel’s nightly rate to nearly $600. Smith said she has seen ticket prices for Swift soar since her last tour, when she came to Dallas for a concert in 2018.
“In 2018 I thought it was expensive, but now I look back and I think, ‘Oh man, I should have taken advantage of this,'” she said.
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Out-of-town fans who snapped up tickets and travel funds at the last minute will face limited accommodation options and high prices, but there are still some spaces available.
Airbnb search results on Tuesday showed the cheapest prices for a two-night stay over a November weekend ranged from $188 for a private room in a home to more than $400 for an entire unit in or near Indianapolis.
Meanwhile, based on prices retrieved from an Expedia search on Tuesday, the cheapest hotel room for two people would cost more than $500 a night, even after fees.
Currently, the cheapest concert tickets being sold on ticket resale sites are over $2,000 a piece.
Alysa Guffey covers retail growth, development and the economy for IndyStar. Contact her at amguffey@gannett.com. Follow her at X: @AlysaGuffeyNews.
