‘Out of control’: Room costs spike 10 times higher on Taylor Swift Canada show nights

VANCOUVER — Taylor Swift fan Kelly Hall was elated when she beat the odds and was allocated three coveted tickets for The Eras Tour in Vancouver.

Then she started looking for a hotel.

Hall, who lives in Oshawa, Ont., planned to fly to Vancouver with her husband and a friend for the weekend of the Dec. 8 show, but the cheapest room was about $1,200 a night.

“We decided that if this weekend alone — just three nights — is going to cost us three to five grand in accommodation, it just wasn’t worth it for us,” said Hall, who is a financial adviser.

So, they did the once-unthinkable: “We decided to sell the tickets.”

The situation facing out-of-town Swift fans now may be even worse, with some hotel rooms and short-term rentals in Toronto and Vancouver on show weekends costing 10 times more than other weekends.

Some fans, like Hall, are cutting potential losses and selling their tickets, while others are coming up with creative solutions, including bartering spare tickets for accommodation.

The British Columbia Hotel Association declined requests for an interview about price fluctuations, and the Greater Toronto Hotel Association did not immediately respond to an interview request.

Swift begins the Canadian leg of her record-breaking tour with six dates in Toronto between Nov. 14 and Nov. 23.

Hotel rooms near the venue during those dates, including the Toronto Marriott City Centre Hotel, attached to the Rogers Centre, are being advertised for around $2,000 per night. That same hotel is offering rooms for $240 in early November.

In Vancouver, where Swift is closing the world tour with three concerts from Dec. 6 to 8, hotel prices have ballooned. On the previous weekend, downtown hotel rooms can be found for around $300 a night. The same rooms are priced around $3,000 a night while the singer is in town.

Airbnb and VRBO rental costs have also exploded. One Vancouver apartment listed on VRBO as sleeping six and being within walking distance of the BC Place show venue was being advertised for $7,500 a night during the shows, which would amount to more than $10,000 after service and host fees.

The same False Creek apartment, though not listed every week, is available for rent next August at $820 per night.

The rental host did not immediately reply to interview requests.

While fans have taken to online forums to grumble about the prices, economist Thomas Davidoff said he “doesn’t really see a problem with surge pricing on Airbnb or hotels.”

“There’ll be a ton of hotel demand and a ton of Airbnb demand, and you know prices will reflect that demand, and that’s appropriate. If you didn’t have high prices, you’d have more random rationing of units,” said Davidoff, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business.

He said a main problem in B.C. is lack of availability due to regulation of short-term rentals.

In May, B.C. restricted short-term rentals to within a host’s home, or a basement suite or the laneway home on the property where they live — although a search of rental sites suggests rule-breaking is not uncommon.

Davidoff said the move “probably had some benefit to (long-term) renters,” but it has caused “in moments like this, a very serious shortage of short-term accommodation.”

“Most economists are not so sad about dynamic pricing … and if you want to prevent the problem of ‘not enough,’ then deregulate hotels or Airbnb,” Davidoff said.

B.C.’s Tourism Ministry said in a statement that short-term rentals were still allowed in B.C. and that Vancouver “already had a primary-residence requirement” for short-term rentals before the provincial rules were changed.

Ken Whitehurst, executive director of the Consumer Council of Canada, said the claim that prices should reflect demand is oversimplified and “detached from reality.”

“The idea that prices (for) something that’s ordinarily affordable to people can fluctuate by large amounts flies in the face of the notions we have in our society about equity,” he said.

Whitehurst said that while it may not be illegal, it may result in other consequences for suppliers, such as losing future business.

Swiftie Facebook forums are now filled with people trying to trade Toronto and Vancouver tickets because of high accommodation costs, as well as requests for local advice on hotel locations and transit options to avoid high rates near the concert venues.

American Heather Cox is travelling to Vancouver from Atlanta, Ga., for the Dec. 7 show after securing six tickets. After one of her party couldn’t make the show, she agreed to swap the spare ticket for four nights at a fellow Swiftie’s penthouse apartment in the city’s West End.

“Hotel prices were out of control,” Cox said. “I then started an Airbnb hunt and, again, the prices were out of control.”

Cox said they signed a “legal barter agreement” as well as a liability form and intend to make the ticket trade in person. The apartment’s resident will stay with a friend.

Both parties felt it was fair, since the resale price of a ticket and that of accommodation near the stadium were similar, Cox said. Ticket resale site StubHub lists single tickets to the show from about $3,000.

“The unique thing, I think, about Taylor Swift fans is they really appreciate other Taylor Swift fans,” Cox said, noting she has seen others strike similar deals. “We all want everybody to be able to enjoy it.”

She said it was “disappointing” to see exorbitant accommodation prices.

“It’s such a shame that it’s just about money,” she said. “I mean, come on, you could still raise them more than their usual rate, but not to the degree where you are pricing people out of being able to just attend it all.”

Whitehurst, with the Consumer Council of Canada, said dynamic pricing is often “applied pretty aggressively” within the travel industry, including by airlines and hotels.

He said a main reason is that provisions about what constitutes price gouging are not well defined.

“There’s probably nothing in consumer protection law that’s going to regulate that federally (and) the Competition Bureau probably would not take a look at it unless there was an indication of collusion in setting the pricing or misrepresentation of prices,” he said.

Kristina Prasad from Maple Ridge, B.C., is trying to help a fellow Swift fan experience a show in Vancouver.

Prasad — who has spent more than $10,000 to buy tickets to all three shows — said she connected with another fan on Instagram and they met in person during the Eras Tour show in Seattle in July 2023.

Their friendship is centred around mutual adoration of Swift’s music, and Prasad has agreed to allow the woman stay at her home during the Vancouver shows, even though she hasn’t secured tickets yet.

“She’s asked me if she could stay at my house to basically (spend) as much funds as she can towards the tickets, because hotel prices are about $1,200 a night,” she said.

“I don’t think I would let just anybody stay at my house. I think outside of the fandom it might seem a little bit weird.”

Alexander Cohen, a spokesman for the Tourism Ministry, said the federal government is “concerned by reports of high prices for hotels in Toronto and Vancouver.”

However, he added that “consumer legislation remains a provincial responsibility.”

Ontario’s Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement said businesses are “not allowed to engage in unfair practices” under the Consumer Protection Act.

That, it said, includes charging a price that grossly exceeds the price at which similar goods or services are readily available to consumers. It did not respond directly to the example of hotel costs during Swift’s concert dates.

Despite giving up on the Vancouver show, Swift fan Hall hasn’t given up on seeing an Eras Tour show closer to home. She will be looking for last-minute tickets outside Rogers Stadium in Toronto.

But she says she’s frustrated that “average people” are being priced out of concerts by accommodation and ticket costs.

“It’s definitely been frustrating. Taylor Swift isn’t the only one, but it’s definitely the most prominent one that I’ve seen thus far,” Hall said. “Definitely, as an avid concertgoer, it’s becoming a little bit disheartening.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 31, 2024.

Brieanna Charlebois, The Canadian Press