Taylor Swift during the Eras Tour in Sao Paulo, Brazil—Marriott is now offering tickets and … [+]
In a bid to win over a younger audience to its hotel chains, Marriott International is adding Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour to its loyalty program.
You might need to have quite a lot of loyalty points in your account, though—500,000, to be exact. Bloomberg reports that while this would usually get a traveler four or five nights’ stay at the Ritz Carlton in New York or the St. Regis in the Maldives, it can now be put against seeing Taylor Swift perform in 11 cities across Europe and North America.
It’s not unusual for Marriott to offer an exchange for points for high-profile travel events—they do so for Formula One Grand Prix races and the Super Bowl. The difference here is that these Taylor Swift points are fixed, whereas usually the experiences go to the highest bidder, upwards of 500,000 points. The idea is to encourage a younger audience to trade them in.
In this case, these points will get you two tickets to see Taylor Swift perform (as well as transport to and from the venue), two nights in a Marriott hotel and dinner at an affiliated restaurant, as well as a spa treatment. Marriott has already tested this idea in Tokyo and packages sold out very quickly. CNN reports that there will be 48 packages available in locations across Stockholm, Madrid, Zurich, Milan, Hamburg, Vienna, Miami, New Orleans, Indianapolis, Toronto and Vancouver.
The actual cost of buying 500,000 points would be around $650,000, per Bloomberg’s calculations, although you are only allowed to buy 100,000 points per calendar year. This isn’t Marriott’s most expensive loyalty package ever, either—5.3 million points were exchanged for a hospitality package to the Super Bowl in 2024.
Eras Tour tickets have been notoriously hard to come by. French newspaper Le Figaro reports that between March 12, 2023 at her first concert at Glendale’s State Farm Stadium, and last November 11 at Buenos Aires’ Estadio Mas Monumental, Swift sold 4.35 million tickets over 60 dates for an average price of $239.
Her impact on the travel economy since the tour began almost one year ago has been undeniable and well documented. As CN Traveler reports, every city she has performed in has seen a huge spike in travel and tourism revenue. Across the U.S., for example, the revenue generated per hotel room was 4% more than the national average and 7% more than the same period the year before.
For those travelers who might not have 500,000 points in a loyalty account, Marriott is also offering 250 sweepstake prizes, meaning that once you set up a loyalty account you can enter—and you could win one of these trips without any points to your name.
To enter the Eras sweepstakes, you must live in one of 23 countries, and the winners will be chosen by lottery to win, for the most part, concert tickets and a welcome drink during their stay—although there are three luxury trips on the table to see Taylor Swift perform in either Vienna, Miami or Toronto. These prizes include round-trip flights in coach class, accommodation and a pair of tickets (possibly worth around $19,500 according to Bloomberg).
Peggy Roe, executive vice president and chief customer officer for Marriott International, said that the partnership aligns with its global growth strategy and is intended to increase membership of the loyalty program through increased chatter on social networks.
Taylor Swift is currently on the Asian leg of the Eras Tour but due to hit Europe in May, starting with Paris on May 9 and then finishing in Canada in November 2024.
Points will be able to be exchanged for packages from 13 March, and the sweepstakes is already live.
