How Taylor Swift could cause Irish inflation to surge

News that Taylor Swift is to play two concerts at the Aviva Stadium next June will not have been well received at the Central Bank of Ireland. They’ll know all about the “Beyoncé effect”; how two of the American singer’s concerts in Stockholm have been blamed for a sudden rise in Swedish inflation. Soaring hotel and restaurant prices caused the spike. “It’s quite astonishing for a single event,” Michael Grahn, Danske Bank’s chief economist, said. “We haven’t seen this before.”

We’re likely to see it again once the Swifties secure tickets for the Dublin shows on June 28th and 29th, 2024 and start booking accommodation. In a newsletter for the New York Times this week, economist Paul Krugman wrote: “I wouldn’t be surprised if Taylor Swift concerts are producing hotel and restaurant booms in the cities in which she performs. Live music is big business.”

Dublin missed out on most of that business this summer, with the touring Beyoncé, Madonna and Coldplay all giving it a miss. You can be sure some hotels are planning Swift retribution, but can anything be done to stop them? Paschal Donohoe, the Minister for Public Expenditure who saw Swift perform the last time she was here, says he takes “pretty seriously the need for the hospitality sector to do the right thing” by her fans. He added: “I’ve not held back in the past from behaviour that I’ve seen in the hospitality sector, at a time when we’re trying to get the sector back on its own two feet again.”

[ Ready for it? How to get Taylor Swift tickets for Dublin gigs ]

Of course, rather than just appeal to Dublin businesses’ better nature, Donohoe could just follow through on restoring the 13.5 per cent VAT rate for hospitality this autumn. It won’t stop price gouging by unscrupulous service providers, but at least it would claw back some of their excess profits for the State’s coffers.