Hotels cash in on Swifties fever as prices skyrocket for Dublin gigs
HOTELS are gonna shake, shake, shake their customers down for Taylor Swift’s three Dublin concerts this summer, with prices now averaging around €400 a night for basic three-star accommodation.
The pop superstar, who released a new double album on Friday just 18 months after her last record, will play three nights at the Aviva Stadium at the end of June.
And as live music and sports enthusiasts around the country have come to expect, hotels in the capital are preparing to make hay at the expense of the Shake It Off singer’s faithful fans.
An Irish Mail on Sunday analysis found a one-night stay for two people in a threestar or four-star hotel will cost €395 or
€434 respectively, on average across the three nights.
This is on top of tickets that ranged from €86 to €206 at face value, with VIP packages costing up to €744.
And as reported by our sister website Business Plus this week, resale tickets for Swifties who missed out during the general sale range from €940 to €4,230 on resale website Gigsberg.
Our analysis of hotels in Dublin found the final night, Sunday June 31, is cheapest accommodation-wise, however, not by much.
Across 29 three-star hotels with availability for that night, customers will pay an average of €377 for a room.
For a four-star stay, that average goes up to €425 for the night – despite 55 available hotels apparently competing for your business.
Saturday is the most expensive night of Swift’s three-date Irish leg in terms of hotel accommodation. A three-star stay averages €418 across 19 options, while a four-star hotel will cost an average of €439 from 38 locations.
The average for Friday night is exactly the same for a four-star stay – €439 from 49 options within a reasonable distance of the city centre.
For three-star options, the average cost is €391 from 23 hotels.
There are a small number of options that fall well below the average prices.
The three-star Maples House Hotel near Drumcondra had rooms available for Friday and Sunday night, at the time of writing, for €211.
And the Russell Court Hotel, a three-star option on Harcourt Street, had rooms for €199 on the
Friday. Demand is apparently higher on Saturday, the cheapest three-star option is the Academy Plaza Hotel just off O’Connell Street, which advertised rooms at €305.
For four-star options, the cheapest across all three nights is the Bonnington Hotel & Leisure Centre on the Swords Road (formerly the Regency), which has rooms for €315 on each of the three nights.
The outlier on the more expensive end is the Clarence Hotel in Temple Bar, where one night’s sleep will set you back a cool €809.
And anyone willing to spend more on a taxi could stay at the three-star Lucan Spa Hotel near the border with Co. Kildare for €189 a night.
Airbnb users won’t fare much better in searching for value. Our analysis found that the cheapest non-shared option will cost €293 for one night, with the second cheapest almost €100 more and the rest considerably more.