UK hoteliers predict Oasis reunion could spark same demand levels as Eras Tour

The desire to see the world's most popular musicians in concert has delivered hotels in the United Kingdom and Ireland swells of demand and revenue.

The summer leg of Taylor Swift's Eras Tour has come to an end in the U.K. and Ireland, but next year, the reunion tour of Manchester rock band Oasis could spark similar levels of hotel bookings.

Taylor Swift's Eras Tour rolled into the U.K. and Ireland for 11 shows in June, stopping in Edinburgh, Liverpool, Cardiff, London and Dublin. Swift then put on another five shows in London on Aug. 15 to 17 and 19 to 20, with more than 450,000 attendees packing Wembley Stadium over the August dates.

According to CoStar hospitality data, Swift's August shows in London pushed hotel performance to its monthly high on Saturday, Aug. 17, when average daily rate rose 21% to £239.01 ($311.76) That night, hotel occupancy rose to 94% and revenue per available room increased to £224.77. A night earlier, on Friday, Aug. 16, London hotel occupancy was 91.8%, ADR reached £224.36 and RevPAR was £205.92.

The overwhelmingly positive economic impact of Swift's Eras Tour cannot be understated.

In Scotland, Edinburgh Council signed an agreement for organizers to have Murrayfield Stadium enlarge its capacity from 67,144 to 72,990, with the City of Edinburgh Council adding the three shows contributed “up to £77 million to the local economy.”

Kate Nicholls, CEO of UKHospitality, the principal hospitality membership organization in the U.K., said in June as part of a post on The Mayor of London’s Office website that “Swifties attending The Eras Tour [are] set to boost [London’s] economy by £300 million.”

Globally, Swift fans are expected to contribute more than “$10 billion to local economies by the time the tour ends in December, spending an average of $1,300 each on things like hotels, food and drink and travel,” Condé Nast Traveller reports.

Naturally, hoteliers around the world have been huge beneficiaries of the fervor to attend Taylor Swift's shows. As Swift's Eras Tour concludes in December after one last leg through North America, could any musical acts provide a similar tourism boost?

A week after Swift’s final London show, Oasis announced a reunion tour with shows in the U.K. and Ireland next summer. Oasis will play in Cardiff, Manchester, London, Edinburgh and Dublin. The band has not played a live show since 2009 due to an acrimonious relationship between band members and brothers Liam Gallagher and Noel Gallagher.

For now, the Oasis reunion tour only includes concerts in the U.K. and Ireland, though extending the tour to the rest of Europe and possibly the U.S. has not been ruled out.

Oasis' comeback is welcome news for hoteliers in the U.K. and Ireland, Nicholls said in a statement to Hotel News Now.

“The Oasis reunion comes as exciting news to fans across the U.K., and the tour is likely to join the likes of Swift, Harry Styles and Beyoncé in delivering record-setting shows in recent years. We expect to see huge demand from fans, both from the U.K. and from abroad, and that will no doubt deliver a multimillion-pound boost to the hospitality sector next year,” she said.

Nicholls said the Oasis shows are another indication of the force of music events, tours and festivals as demand drivers for the hospitality industry.

“It’s clear the pull of live music is as strong as ever. Hotels will get booked up quickly as fans secure tickets, and pubs, bars and restaurants will all be packed next summer with concert-going fans,” she added.

It's likely that the Oasis shows will see revenue and profits that eclipse Swift’s U.K. shows, although not that of Swift’s entire tour. One difference between the two tours is that Swift’s attracted a notable percentage of international visitors to her stops in the U.K. and Ireland. Oasis’ audience is likely to be mostly a British and Irish affair, and concertgoers will skew to an older demographic.

Occupancy on the books for the Oasis shows already reveal some interesting phenomena, said William Anns, analyst at STR, CoStar's hospitality analytics firm.

As of Sept. 5, almost 70% of hotels in Cardiff — where Oasis is scheduled to play two shows on July 4 and 5, 2025 — are already sold out. In Manchester, almost 55% of hotel rooms for Oasis' five shows there have been booked. London, which usually is so popular that large events do not skew hotel performance much, already has a little more than 10% of its rooms sold for when the Gallagher brothers arrive.

Could Oasis concert attendees stay in more upscale hotels, or will higher pricing based on demand see them move down the segments?

Silvia Camarota, senior director of North America market management and lodging at Expedia Group, said at the recent Hotel Data Conference that hotel bookings for such major events like the Eras Tour can come in waves. She added that hoteliers need to be proactive when it comes to setting pricing strategies around those event dates.

“In Houston, Atlanta, Chicago and Nashville, we saw a really interesting pattern emerge. So, there was basically the first spike … when the tickets go on sale. And that’s where about 15% of the total bookings were made,” Camarota said, referencing the 2023 U.S. leg of Swift's Eras Tour. “Then it sort of quiets down, and then about four to five weeks before the concert, another 15% of the bookings are made. Great, great news. Well, guess what? The rest of it? Forty percent comes in the week right before the concert.

“But what’s happening with the [average daily rate] at the same time? [It] is declining significantly to a point that it degrades completely in the week of that event. … We are talking about experience and how important it is to make sure you’re pricing yourself in a reasonable manner from the beginning, because I’m sure all of you would rather be in that first 15% and put most of your inventory there, rather than waiting for that last minute,” she said.

Upon hearing the news of the Oasis reunion, some fans correctly guessed when the tour would come to the U.K.’s major cities. Upon booking a hotel stay, these fans then received a cancellation notice — the actual tour dates and cities had by then been announced — that said this was due to a “technical error.”

On Sept. 5, the U.K. government’s Competition & Markets Authority announced it launched an investigation into any “unfair commercial practices” by Ticketmaster, including dynamic pricing concerns over ticket sales for the Oasis shows. The investigation will collect evidence on the matter until Sept. 19.

Could hotels face the same scrutiny in pricing their hotels for such mega-events?

“Regarding hotel pricing, the rules are the same in principle [as event-ticket distribution], but how these rules apply will vary depending on the particular scenario and conduct,” said Paul Williams, senior associate at legal firm Pinsent Masons. “The CMA has now opened a consumer law investigation into the sale of the Oasis tickets. … This has been opened under its current powers, which require it to take a case to court. Its new future powers will allow it to issue administrative fines for breaches of consumer law.”

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