If you want to stay in Pittsburgh this weekend, you might have to sleep outside.
That’s because Taylor Swift — pop megastar and global economic force — is set to storm the 68,000-seat Acrisure Stadium for two concerts, Friday and Saturday, bringing with her an onslaught of fans eager to catch a glimpse of one of the best-selling musicians of all time.
With the incoming deluge of Swifties, virtually every hotel in the city is sold out, and local restaurants are gearing up for an unprecedented uptick in diners.
“It took about a day of scouring Tripadvisor to find something reasonable,” said Vikki Ginsley, who’s driving more than 300 miles from Toronto to see the concert.
When Ms. Ginsley, a doctoral candidate at Ontario Tech University, checked hotel prices, she said everything in Downtown cost around $800, about four times more expensive than the average cost of a room when Ms. Swift isn't playing Pittsburgh. She was eventually able to find a room for two nights for $450, but it was near the airport, at least a 25-minute drive to the North Shore — and perhaps exponentially longer given the expected traffic congestion.
From the beginning, the pop star’s Eras tour — which includes songs from all 10 of her albums, all of which went platinum, and nine of which went multi-platinum — promised to be a spectacle.
The presale alone pumped out 2 million tickets, crashing Ticketmaster and triggering a congressional hearing. Ms. Swift also hasn’t visited Pittsburgh since 2018.
And fans from the city and beyond are demonstrably hungry for more of her.
“All of Allegheny County is sold out,” said Mandie Slavinsky, a sales coordinator at Drury Plaza Hotel, Downtown.
Currently, there isn’t one hotel room open in Pittsburgh on Friday, the night of Ms. Swift’s first concert, and rooms snatched up in the past week went for more than $1,000 on average, five times the price of a room the previous weekend, a Post-Gazette analysis of Booking.com data found.
Six other hotels in surrounding suburban areas, such as Robinson, Cranberry, Monroeville and South Hills, confirmed they were all sold out during the concert weekend. Even Hotel in Downtown ran out of rooms way back in December and experienced a similar crash as Ticketmaster did because of the extreme influx of reservations.
With 52 concert dates in 20 different cities, Eras and its economic and cultural impacts are rippling across the country.
Ms. Swift kicked off her tour on March 17 in Glendale, Ariz., where the city was briefly renamed “Swift City.” Local officials estimated 150,000 Swift fans populated the city that weekend.
In Philadelphia and Chicago, throngs of fans who couldn’t secure tickets stood outside the stadiums, soaking in the atmosphere.
Other cities slated to host Ms. Swift and her entourage have shown similar trends to Pittsburgh when it comes to hotel availability and prices. On June 23, the night Taylor Swift plays in Minneapolis, the average hotel price has nearly tripled compared to the previous week — from $230 to $660. In Kansas City, which is gearing up for the pop star’s concert in July, all but five hotels are sold out. For the Friday a week prior, 32 hotels have rooms available.
“The AI algorithm we use recorded a record spike when the tour was announced,” said Jacob Nostrant, who helps manage Coffee Included USA, an Airbnb-affiliated company. The inventory in Pittsburgh was booked up at a rate faster than some annual holidays and even important Steelers games, he added.
Bars and restaurants on the North Shore are also bracing for a crush of fans during concert weekend.
“We have servers and managers actually coming in from different stores to help us because of the high volume of people that we'll have,” said Alexis Flory, front-of-house manager at Bar Louie, a short walk from Acrisure Stadium.
Over the years, Pittsburgh has been home to several substantial summer concerts, which helps drive Allegheny County’s tourism economy.
When the Pittsburgh Pirates hosted a concert series at PNC Park last summer, the shows drew more than 160,000 concert-goers to the North Shore — more than half from outside Allegheny County — and generated upward of $40 million, said Susan Klein, VisitPittsburgh's chief marketing officer. Elton John alone brought in nearly 40,000 attendees.
“Concert-goers touch so many parts of our tourism ecosystem — from hotels and parking, to restaurants, attractions, shopping and much more,” Ms. Klein said. “These concerts boost so many of our local businesses throughout the summer months.”
But even as local businesses celebrate the wave of new business, concertgoers remain miffed by the exorbitant costs.
“I understand why hotels hike prices,” Ms. Ginsley said. “But I certainly don't agree with it.”
Emma Kim: ekim@post-gazette.com. Neena Hagen: nhagen@post-gazette.com
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of Swift albums that have gone platinum.
First Published: June 13, 2023, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: June 14, 2023, 7:23 p.m.