Taylor Swift helped give Philadelphia its best month of hotel revenue since the onset of the pandemic, according to a report from the Federal Reserve.
“Despite the slowing recovery in tourism in the region overall, one contact highlighted that May was the strongest month for hotel revenue in Philadelphia since the onset of the pandemic, in large part due to an influx of guests for the Taylor Swift concerts in the city,” according to the report.
The report is just the latest example of how the singer-songwriter has been a boon for businesses as her 52-date Eras Tour makes its way around the nation, attracting hundreds of thousands of fans.
Swift, a native of West Reading, Pa., performed three sold-out shows in May at the Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia.
Those in Philadelphia’s hotel and hospitality industry told CBS News in May that the Eras Tour weekend boosted business.
“We saw 30,000 people throughout the weekend, Friday through Sunday, at the Independence Visitor Center,” Jennifer Nagle, of the Philadelphia Visitor Center Corporation, told CBS News. She said that was just 10 percent shy of numbers they saw in 2019.
The tour itself is on track to becoming one of, if not the highest-grossing tour in music history, according to reports from Bloomberg.
The tour made headlines before it even began, after many fans became furious about technical difficulties that prevented them from securing tickets through Ticketmaster when sales kicked off in November.
The ticket fiasco sparked calls on Capitol Hill to strengthen antitrust laws and investigate Ticketmaster’s merger with Live Nation.
A Senate Judiciary Committee grilled Ticketmaster and Live Nation leaders in January about the consolidation of the industry and whether Swift’s ticket sales fiasco pointed to broader problems for fans.