Adele in Munich: How is the concert series impacting hotel and short-term rental pricing?

Finally, a rival to Taylor Swift emerges. Adele is back in Europe and her surprise announcement of a residency in Munich this August has kicked off a rush for rooms that rivals even the Eras Tour.

Adele’s Munich show announcements kick off a flight and hotel search frenzy

Adele’s announcement of a set of shows in Munich this August came out of the blue, surprising fans and media alike, but the reaction was immediate.

From announcement to release was an extremely brief period, with news of the show hitting newspaper front pages on 31st January, followed by ticket registration closing on 5th January and then sales on 9th February.

This was hardly a typical run up to a blockbuster set of tour dates, which come with extensive marketing for most artists.

Nonetheless, this was plenty enough for Adele’s legion of fans, with the impact on searches for the Munich market obvious.

Initially, flights were the first to pick up, with a clear and sudden spike in searches upon the announcement of the run of shows. The volume then nearly halved in the subsequent six weeks, returning to typical levels, demonstrating a sellout for show tickets, and creating a wave of flight bookings.

We then see a pick-up of searches for hotels on Online Travel Agent (OTA) and metasearch sites. Search volumes peak a week after the sale period as concertgoers who have secured show tickets and transport then search for accommodation.

This behavioral pattern is clear and obviously linked to the shows, with fans following typical search and booking routes, searching first for transportation and then accommodation.

Further proof of this being generated by Adele is in the lead time for searches for hotels. Searches for stays 90 days or more in the future also peak a week after tickets were released.

With the concerts set to start 175 days after they were snapped up by fans, this is also directly linked to the shows and is an unusual pattern, accommodation searches are usually most common a few weeks out from the stay date.

For both flights and hotels, the volume of searches generated by Adele’s residency in Munich is the highest seen in the last year, even with the Euros going on in Germany, underlining her star power.

A rival to the Taylor Swift hospitality phenomenon?

We have written an awful lot about Taylor Swift’s all-conquering world tour over the last year, but this run of shows might be even more remarkable, as we may have finally found a fan base that can rival the Swifties for their devotion and willingness to travel to see their idol.

Swift is playing two tour dates just a week before Adele kicks off her own concerts, and the numbers are remarkably close for occupancy and pricing.

Firstly, the two are driving very comparable occupancy figures along the booking curve on days when they are scheduled to play.

While Swift has pushed up demand enough to sell out a peak of 73% of hotel rooms and 54% of Short-term rentals in Munich at the time of writing, on the opening weekend of Adele’s shows occupancy sits at a very close 69% for hotels and 48% for short-term rentals.

Occupancy continues downwards as would be expected as the booking curve develops to just under half (49%) of hotel rooms sold on the evening of the final Adele concert and 42% of short-term rentals, which are still notably elevated above surrounding weekends. Occupancy on the weekend following the run of Adele shows is 30% for hotels and 29% for short-term rentals.

The points where these two global superstars are in the city are clear on the chart, with each weekend heavily elevated compared to immediately surrounding weekends and also a greater range of variance on these weekends when the concerts are being held compared to weekdays in adjacent periods.

Where Adele has the edge though is in hotel pricing, as Munich hoteliers are pricing their rooms for Adele’s dates higher than for Swift.

Adele's opening weekend peaks at €302 average price for a standard hotel room, whereas during the Era stop in Munich prices peak at €279.

Furthermore, for the latter, this peak is for one night only, despite there being two shows in the city, which is also the case for Adele’s opening weekend.

Hotel prices on the second night of Adele's 3rd August show sit at €298 -- a pattern that repeats itself throughout the run where we see raised prices on both nights. For the shows on the 14th and 16th of August, there are increased rates for both dates, in between show dates, and also on the 17th of August.

While it’s just one stop on the Eras Tour, it, therefore, seems that there is a rival to the throne of hospitality demand generation from concerts.

As we have seen in other markets when we have looked at major events, short-term rentals are not very responsive to this demand, despite correlated patterns in occupancy. Forecast prices in our database appear to be tracking closer to long-term averages and weekly prices during the concerts are below standard pricing for the comparable periods in 2023 and 2022.

This appears to be a miscalculation on the part of short-term rental owners, who perhaps have been caught short by the sudden announcements of these concerts and additional dates.

For hotels though, there appears to be plenty of reason to hold course on the current pricing strategy and maximize what is currently a unique run of sets and a devoted fan base determined to make the most out of an extremely rare European performance from a true member of pop royalty.

To get a full suite of demand predictions for Munich, or any one of the hundreds of locations and over 700,000 events we monitor in our system, click here.