Before Coldplay mania hit Mumbai and Ahmedabad, there was Abu Dhabi. Last week, more than a week before their much-anticipated India concerts starting this Saturday, the Brit band kicked off their first shows of 2025 in the Persian Gulf city of Abu Dhabi.
As I stand expectantly amidst a mass of humanity awaiting the gig at the Zayed Sports City in the UAE capital to start, snatches of conversations wafting into my ears have a hint of familiarity. There’s Malayalam (it is the Middle East, after all!), but there are also oodles of Hindi and its unique urban Hinglish variant, as well as a smattering of Tamil and Bengali.
The Brit accent permeates the air as expats walk around excited like kids in a candy store. And naturally, various dialects of Arabic float through the charged air.
True to form, when Coldplay frontman Chris Martin got up on stage, he used booking data to thank fans “who’ve travelled in from around the world” for the concert—Africa, India, Pakistan, various countries across the Middle East of course, and some even from the Americas and Australia.
Live concerts are no longer just a headbanger’s ball but a global machinery that redefines culture, tourism, and the economy. Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, the most successful of all time, paved the way for terminologies like ‘Swifties’ to refer to her die-hard fans who travelled and splurged for her shows, but also ‘Swift Lift’, referring to how her shows boosted economies of the places she held her concerts in.
This weekend, it will hit a crescendo in India, with Coldplay starting the first of their four concerts in India—three each in Mumbai on January 18, 19, and 21, followed by a one-off in Ahmedabad on January 25. The event had already hit headlines back in September when tickets went on sale online, with the official booking site BookMyShow crashing, setting off resale and black marketing of tickets on websites and sparking off a police investigation into suspected scamming.
“India has emerged as a highly attractive and compelling destination for both domestic and international acts, with the burgeoning appetite for live entertainment events in the country,” Owen Roncon, chief operating officer (live Events) of BookMyShow, the organiser of the Coldplay event amongst others, had told THE WEEK that time.
With other players like Zomato also hopping onto the bandwagon (Zomato was the organiser of the equally-fast-sell-out Diljit Dosanjh concert in the autumn across Indian cities), revenue from live events will be above 14,000 crore this year, according to business body FICCI. Acts scheduled to visit India after Coldplay and Bryan Adams (last month) will be Ed Sheeran, Dua Lipa, Cigarettes After Sex, etc.—some at the Lollapalooza music festival in Mumbai in March.
But concert revenue is just one part of the whole ‘gig tripping’ or ‘Music tourism’ that has had the tourism industry waking up and taking note. When people travel to a concert destination, they not only spend on the tickets but also book flights, taxis, and hotels, as well as drink and eat at restaurants and bars and check out tourist attractions and experiences in and around the place.
While Mumbai is already seeing an uptick in hotel room rates — some hotels near the DY Patil Stadium where the concert is being held have had their rates shoot up to beyond one lakh rupees a night, while flight tickets to Mumbai are also going at a premium. Abu Dhabi experienced the same last week, with all hotels in the UAE capital going full, while hotels in nearby Dubai were reported to be 80% fully booked weeks before the event.
“Excitement…is making people even travel overseas to (attend concerts and sports events),” said Ankush Nijhawan, tourism entrepreneur and founder of TBO.com, “Look at the way MICE (a term used for events tourism, which till now generally referred to work conferences and weddings) will happen at Coldplay in Mumbai.”
Tourism experts now point out the immense potential of music-related travel. The connection that music forms is a magnetic pull for fans to not just travel for concerts but also embark on music trails, visit museums, and go to spots that are of significance to their favourite acts’ careers. Both the ABBA Museum in Stockholm and the Beatles Museum in Liverpool are top draws, and so is Memphis in the US for Elvis Presley, or New Orleans, the home of Jazz.
In India, would it translate to a trip to Lata Mangeshkar’s home in Peddar Road in Mumbai or the music and dance quarters of Chennai if they are presented as a curated product? Something for Indian tourism professionals to chew on, even as Customer Markets Insight predicts the global music tourism market to grow 8.5 per cent over the next decade, hitting about 1.2 lakh crore rupees by 2032 as per today’s currency equivalent.