“Gig tripping”: US guests are in fifth place in ESC ticket sales

After all, the industry-related economic research institute set a value-added multiplier of 1.7 for the Eurovision Song Contest – every publicly invested euro should trigger around 1.70 euros in economic performance.

Also the boss of the Austria advertising, Astrid Steharnig-Staudingeris convinced of the success of the Eurovision Song Contest and refers to “gig tripping”.

The term describes the travel trend of planning vacation trips specifically around concerts or festival visits to your favorite artists. Fans fly across continents to see stars like Taylor Swift, Adele or the ESC.

Guests from the USA are in fifth place in ticket sales, even though the USA is not taking part in the song contest. Domestic buyers are in first place, followed by Germany, Great Britain and Switzerland. Australia is in 7th place. A total of 95,000 tickets were sold for the nine ESC shows.

The top tourism advertiser is particularly pleased about the Americans’ fifth place because the USA made it into the top 10 countries of origin for Austria for the first time in 2025 and US guests are also booking Austria more and more in winter tourism with an increase of 15 percent in overnight stays in Austria.

“It’s a bombastic show coming our way,” said ORF program director Stefanie Groiss-Horowitz. In the end, no one will confuse “Austria” with “Australia” anymore. In any case, international visibility is also seen as an exceptional opportunity for tourism.