The Taylor Swift effect didn’t take over Down Under — at least not when it comes to inflation.
Taylor Swift performed seven sold-out shows in Melbourne and Sydney in February, taking her multi-billion-dollar Eras Tour to Australia. And it seems economists at the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), which prepares and distributes economic data, were bracing for the pricing impacts of Swift’s tour stops on hotels and travel fares as fans came from across the country (and the world) to see Swift perform.
Some experts have linked Swift’s global tour, alongside others like Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour, to temporary spikes in inflation in some nations, including the United States. But in Australia, economists can shake off similar concerns: the ABS’s newly-published consumer price index for February show Swift’s tour stop didn’t have an impact on inflation.
“Although Taylor Swift performances saw hotel prices rise in Sydney and Melbourne, elsewhere accommodation and airfare prices fell in February due to the end of the peak travel during the January school holiday period,” said Michelle Marquardt, the ABS’s head of prices statistics.
Australia’s CPI, a key inflation measure, stayed static in February, rising 3.4% for a third consecutive month. The biggest drivers of inflation were housing, food and non-alcoholic beverages, alcohol and tobacco and insurance and financial services.
It’s no secret that the Eras Tour has had considerable local economic effects, drawing crowds numbering in the thousands at sold out stadiums now worldwide. Swift is estimated to have given the U.S. economy a $5.7 billion boost, not just from ticket sales, but from other spending including salaries, costumes, travel, hotels and food.
“She is in and of herself an economic event. She is a global economic phenomenon, even at the micro level,” Gonzaga University economics professor Ryan Herzog told CNBC earlier this month.
Businesses and governments alike have scrambled to get in on the action — and catch as much of the lucrative Swift spillover as they can. In anticipation of the Australian leg of the tour, Air New Zealand added more than 2,000 seats around the concert dates, new flights to Melbourne, Sydney and surrounding cities, and increased capacity to account for what it called the “Swift surge.”
Earlier this month, Singapore inked an exclusive deal with Swift for six (already sold out) shows in the city-state, and to have her skip over the other cities in the Southeast Asian leg of her tour. This could provide Singapore’s economy an estimated $370 million windfall.
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