CELEBRITY
Taylor Swift and the crazy “Swifties” landed in the UK, ready to “stir up” the economy with a rain of 500 million pounds!
TAYLOR SWIFT will give the UK a massive lift this summer by sparking a £500million spending spree.
Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer hailed Swiftymania for putting rocket boosters under the tourism industry here.
Economists reckon US superstar Taylor, 34, is the biggest thing in music since Beatlemania in the Sixties.
Her globetrotting Eras Tour, which began in the States in March last year and will close in December in Canada, has already smashed records to become the highest-grossing tour in history — and is forecast to net her £3.2BILLION.
UK pubs, restaurants and hotels will cash in massively as she plays 15 arena dates — in Edinburgh, Liverpool, Cardiff then London in June, and again in London in August.
A staggering 1.1million tickets have been sold for the UK gigs, and transport firms and clothes stores are also among those set to coin it.
incentives of more than £2million for each of her six gigs there — to boost its tourism.
Now tourism bosses in Britain are looking to jump on the bandwagon, too.
Gig tickets cost between £58 and £387, but excited fans are expected to fork out hundreds more staying in hotels and eating and drinking, as well as buying new outfits and travelling to concerts.
Hotels in Wembley, Liverpool, and Cardiff are hiking prices by around 500 per cent when the tour arrives.
A room in a Travelodge in Liverpool will surge from £45 a night to £220.
Each concert-goer is expected to dress up in the style of their favourite Swifty era, which means splashing out cash on party gear.
Taylor is also responsible for a global boom in friendship bracelets, which her fans wear and swap at her gigs.
Makers selling on online retail platform Etsy have made tens of thousands of pounds from the craze.
Demand was so high when Taylor played Australia in February that craft shops in Brisbane suffered a “great bead shortage”.
Meanwhile, at The Black Dog pub in Vauxhall, South London, business has never been better since Taylor sang about it in her 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department, released earlier this month.
Danni Hewson added: “People want to live Taylor’s life — go where she goes, eat where she eats, walk where she walks, in the same way you had Beatlemania, with people wanting to go to places like Penny Lane.