New York CNN —
Get ready, plane travelers: Summer’s official kickoff is about to get even busier this weekend thanks to Taylor Swift.
United Airlines said demand for flights to Lisbon, Portugal, where Swift is performing on her “Hellas Tour,” has surged 25% this weekend compared to last summer, and the surge is expected to continue for coming months as fans flock to Europe for concert tickets that are thousands of dollars cheaper than in the United States.
A United representative told CNN that bookings have also surged for other European cities, including Madrid, Edinburgh and Dublin, where she will perform in the coming weeks.
United Airlines flights to Milan and Munich for Swift’s July concerts saw the largest increase in demand, with passenger numbers up more than 45% compared to last year.
The airline flies to all of these cities from its East Coast hubs in Newark and Dulles, as well as other destinations from hubs in San Francisco, Denver, Chicago O’Hare and Houston.
Delta Air Lines told CNN it is seeing increased demand for flights to her European tour, and the airline said it is ready to fly its largest international summer schedule ever by bringing back routes and adding destinations that were cut because of the pandemic.
Both airlines are bracing for record-breaking summer travel overall: Delta Airlines and United Airlines said they will carry about 3 million passengers over the Memorial Day weekend, which runs from Thursday through Monday, a 5% increase from last year.
Airlines for America, the trade group that represents the major U.S. airlines, expects passenger numbers to hit a record high this summer, with airlines carrying 270 million passengers, up 6 percent from last year.
The increase in bookings is just another example of “Swiftonomics,” the pop icon’s ability to influence the economies of the cities and countries she visits on her global tours.
A recent Barclays report said more than one million Swifties are expected to attend the superstar’s concerts in the UK later this summer, with the average fan spending 642 pounds ($810) on travel, accommodation and other expenses, injecting a total of 755 million pounds ($953 million) into the UK economy.
“In the case of a cultural icon like Taylor Swift, the drive to spend is even stronger as supporters feel such a strong connection to the artist and the fandom as a whole – as we saw with Elvis and Beatlemania in the 50s and 60s,” Dr Peter Brooks, Barclays’ chief behavioural scientist, said in the report.
–CNN’s Anna Cuban contributed to this report.
