Taylor Swift fan Kelly Hall was elated when she beat the odds and was allocated three 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 on 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 accommodations.
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.
Some rooms rose from $300 to $3,000 a night
Swift begins the Canadian leg of her record-breaking tour this month, 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, which is 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 Dec. 6-8, 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.
With Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour coming to Canada within weeks, Canadian Swifties are being aggressively targeted by scammers trying to sell them fake tickets for big bucks. One fan had her Facebook account hacked by a scammer posing as a friend.
Airbnb and VRBO rental costs have also exploded. One Vancouver apartment listed on VRBO as sleeping six and within walking distance of the BC Place 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.
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.
Swifties swapping tickets for accommodations
American Heather Cox is travelling to Vancouver from Atlanta, Ga., for the Dec. 7 show, after securing six tickets. When one person in 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 she and the fellow Swiftie 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.”
Ken Whitehurst, executive director of the Consumer Council of Canada, said dynamic pricing is often “applied pretty aggressively” within the travel industry, including by airlines and hotels.
A Taylor Swift fan who had secured accommodations in Toronto for the star’s November concert tells CBC’s Go Public that Booking.com abruptly cancelled the reservations, only offering alternatives that were up to eight times more expensive.
He said one 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 there — 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 to stay at her home during the Vancouver shows, even though she hasn’t secured tickets yet.
“I don’t think I would let just anybody stay at my house,” she said. “I think outside of the fandom, it might seem a little bit weird.”
Tourism ministry ‘concerned’ about high prices
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.
The ministry said that 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.