Marriott Bonvoy Is Helping Swifties Get Tickets To The Eras Tour

29.02.2024 - 00:11 / forbes.com / Taylor Swift / Willy Wonka

It’s Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket competition of 2024. Marriott Bonvoy is offering members of its loyalty scheme the chance to see Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. And you don’t have to work out ways to get enough Bonvoy points to be the highest bidder; it’s a sweepstake which means anyone can win. Winners will be picked at random - a good thing. Less great is that the odds against you winning are huge.

But imagine you do. Top of the pile is the Unforgettable Experience, which promises to be exactly that to anyone who knows all the lyrics to Epiphany or that Taylor doesn’t like sea urchins.

Winning one of these packages would result in seeing Swift perform in a city (one in the U.S., one in Canada and one in Europe) on a four-day, three night trip, with flights, hotel and - of course - two concert tickets. There’s also a Marriott hotel welcome gift but that’s probably not the primary incentive for entering. Entry for this part of the competition ends on June 1. There’s also a Vancouver Ultimate Concert Experience, which involves air travel and hotel accommodation (and concert tickets, obviously). This sweepstake ends on October 4.

Also on offer are ‘Where Can We Take You’ which would give the prize winner tickets in a variety of different locations, including Stockholm, Madrid, Zurich, Milan, Hamburg, Vienna and then as it returns to the U.S and Canada. Miami, New Orleans, Indianapolis, Toronto and Vancouver. Winners would have to make their way to the cities involved but that’s hardly likely to dent their popularity; particularly in Europe, traveling to the city, whether by land or air, is not likely to be expensive.

By opting for a sweepstake for these tickets, Marriott is playing a long, wide-reaching game. Taylor Swift fans are the demographic that all the big hotel groups want to wean off Airbnb. Thus far, they’ve built the sort of fun, budget-minded hotels they like including Moxy’s (for Marriott), Mama Shelter (Accor) and Motto Hotels (Hilton). All the big hotel groups have forged links with sports and music event companies to tap into the millennial market.

Now, by sponsoring the tour of a performer, they get to reap feel good vibes from a generation. (Also, Swifties are generally the sort of fans that hoteliers dream of attracting; at the Japan leg of the Eras tour, which Marriott was also a touring sponsor, its hotels had pre-concert friendship bracelet-making stations.)

So, the small print is that you can only enter once for the sweepstake and you have to be registered in an eligible country (although, to be fair these are quite wide-ranging).

Also, if you don’t fancy the odds of winning one of the above, soon Marriott Bonvoy will be offering Taylor Swift packages on its more usual points-based