News
USA – LIVE NATION AND SKIFT LAUNCH A MUSIC TOURISM SUMMIT
Live Nation and Skift, a travel and tourism platform, will host the inaugural edition of the Skift Live Tourism Summit on September 22 in New York. This private, invitation-only strategic gathering is reserved for top executives from the tourism and live entertainment sectors. The summit will focus on “live tourism”: travel demand that does not originate from a specific destination, but rather from a concert, festival, or sporting event.
The meeting will take place at North Javits in Manhattan and is strictly by invitation. Skift expects to welcome over eighty high-level executives from tourism organizations, the hospitality sector, aviation, sports, entertainment, travel platforms, venue managers, event organizers, and the public sector, among others. The afternoon session will directly align with the opening reception of the Skift Global Forum, which will be held in New York from September 22 to 24.
From an Isolated Episode to Structural Demand
According to the organizers, the goal of the summit is to demonstrate that live events have now become a structural factor in travel behavior, whereas many operators still view them as isolated agenda items. Skift argues that live tourism revolves around moments rather than places, creating travel corridors between cities, regions, and countries, with measurable, long-term economic effects.
Four Key Questions on the Agenda
The program revolves around four fundamental questions: how organizations plan capacity to meet event-driven demand, how they support travelers when a single event attracts global attention, how service and reputation are restored when all systems are simultaneously under pressure, and how destinations, venues, and travel platforms align their respective roles.
Rather than a program featuring live performances, Skift opts for roundtables, original research, and actionable frameworks. Key topics include the economics of live tourism (who creates value and who captures it), the role of fans as a travel driver, and whether destinations are infrastructurally prepared to handle the growing demand.
Speakers from the Tourism and Live Entertainment Industries
Among the first announced speakers are Russell Wallach, Global President of Media and Sponsorships at Live Nation, Angela Val, CEO of Visit Philadelphia, and Steve Hill, CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. Additional names will be announced at a later date.
Live Nation supports its business case with data from its own fan research, Living for Live. This research shows that nearly six out of ten fans travel every year to attend a concert, and that in 2024, fans worldwide traveled approximately 40 billion miles (about 64 billion kilometers) to attend live music events. This is equivalent to 83,000 trips to the Moon. The research is based on a sample of 40,000 respondents aged between 18 and 54 across fifteen countries. Live Nation Entertainment Live Nation Newsroom
The promoters highlight the ripple effect of this flow: from plane tickets and overnight stays to local hospitality and retail. The strategic question they raise is how to convert occasional demand spikes into sustained demand.