With only a few days until Taylor Swift plays her first Canadian show on the Eras Tour, the city of Toronto is rushing to finish preparations for what might be the busiest two weeks of its entire history.
Over the course of two weekends, Swift will play six sold-out shows at the Rogers Centre to an audience of around 60,000 people each night. Starting on Nov. 14, the city says that they are expecting up to 500,000 visitors to be in town for the shows, most of whom will need places to stay, food to eat and transit infrastructure to get around. There is no doubt that many business owners throughout Toronto have taken notice.
Soon after the concert dates were announced in August of last year, hotel prices for the two weekends Swift would be in town shot up. As the first show quickly approaches, the price of many accommodations has increased ten-fold and only continues to rise. The Toronto Marriott City Centre Hotel, which is attached to the Rogers Centre, is now selling rooms for about $2,000 a night when the same room was being advertised at $240 only a few weeks prior. While there are very few Airbnb and VRBO listings remaining for the dates, their prices have also spiked drastically.
This has caused many fans of the singer who will be travelling to Toronto for the show to panic as they can no longer afford the rising prices of hotels. The result has been a plethora of Swifties requesting to trade Toronto tickets for Vancouver tickets and vice versa on Facebook groups due to the astronomical cost of staying in the city.
This likely won’t be the only problem fans of Swift will face. Even those lucky enough to live in the GTA or have booked a hotel well in advance still have to figure out how to get to the stadium, which is a whole ballgame in itself.
Officials predict that traffic congestion in the city will reach all-time highs and with various road closures, getting to the stadium on time may be harder than ever. Barbara Gray, Toronto’s general manager of transportation, suggests that attendees should be taking public transit and leaving their cars at home. The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) has expanded their service on the days of the shows and GO Transit have also added trains to their typical schedule to accommodate the influx of fans travelling from in and around the GTA.
Yet in the face of all these considerations, Toronto has made the safety of Swifties their top priority. Following the cancellation of three shows in Vienna this summer due to a foiled plot to attack the Eras Tour, intelligence teams have been monitoring any potential threats. Furthermore, a visible police presence will be stationed in crucial places in the general vicinity of the venue, making sure that everyone can enjoy the show safely.
While making sure the city continues to function throughout the next two weeks is a massive undertaking, the Eras Tour is likely to be the most economically impactful series of events to grace the city in years. Between shopping, eating, sleeping and commuting, fans of the singer are likely to introduce $282,000,000 into Toronto’s economy. “There’s a lot of reasons to be excited about Taylor Swift coming to town,” Andrew Weir, the CEO of Destination Toronto said. “282 million reasons.”
As the countdown to the magic grows shorter each day, fans of Taylor Swift grow more excited. Swifties all over are putting together their outfits and making their friendship bracelets, and Toronto continues to get ready for their arrival.