First the destination was chosen and only afterwards, once the flight and hotel had been booked, did we look for exhibitions, shows and events capable of filling the trip; today, more and more often, that order is completely reversed, because everything starts from the date of a concert, from winning a ticket during a pre-sale and from the decision to follow your favorite artist even beyond national borders, transforming a live evening into an opportunity to discover a new city.
It is the so-called gig trippingone of the most evident expressions of contemporary experiential tourism, in which music no longer represents just one of the activities to be included in the itinerary, but becomes the very reason for departure. In 2025, Italian pop, rock and pop music concerts exceeded 40,000, attracting over 26 million spectators and generating overall economic benefits estimated at 4.3 billion euros, together with more than 11 million overnight stays on the national territory.
The phenomenon does not only concern large stadium tours, because it involves transport, catering, commerce and accommodation facilities, changing the booking calendar and bringing thousands of people to destinations that, without that specific date, they probably would not have considered. Recent examples show the economic strength of this mobility: for Taylor Swift’s Milan concerts, 77% of spectators came from outside the region and 30% from abroad, while for David Gilmour’s Roman shows the share of audiences coming from other regions reached 83%.
When the ticket chooses the destination
The trip built around a concert has very specific needs, because it generally lasts a few days, is organized on non-changeable dates and must combine the cost of the ticket, the cost of connections and the price of accommodation, which can increase rapidly in the hours following the opening of sales in the areas close to the arenas.
The location of the structure therefore becomes almost as decisive as the rate: it is not always necessary to sleep next to the venue, but it is important to be able to reach it with a direct line or with few changes, especially at the end of the show, when thousands of spectators flock to public transport at the same time. Private rooms for couples and families, shared dormitories for groups of friends and solo travellers, reception open during the night and connections to stations and airports have become some of the central criteria of concert tourism.
It is in this scenario that a&o Hostels offers an itinerary through London, Berlin and Düsseldorf, three cities involved in the autumn dates of Muse and the Backstreet Boys and in which the chain has central facilities or facilities connected to the main arenas. It is not a question of following the entire European calendar of artists, which also includes other destinations, but of using some events as a starting point to build accessible city breaks.
Muses in London: rock meets one of the world’s music capitals
Muse’s European tour will pass through the O2 Arena in London on 15 and 16 November 2026, with two shows that will bring the new production linked to The Wow! Signal. The date of November 15th and the subsequent repeat are included in the series of indoor concerts which will also include Manchester, Berlin, Milan, Düsseldorf, Paris, Amsterdam, Montpellier and Zurich.
For fans, London remains one of the natural destinations of European music tourism, not only for the number of arenas and clubs, but because the history of rock and pop continues to be readable through entire neighborhoods, record shops, recording studios and halls that have become part of the collective imagination. The concert can thus be accompanied by a walk on Abbey Road, a visit to the clubs in Camden, the Brick Lane markets or an evening between Soho and the West End.
The O2 is located on the Greenwich Peninsula and can be reached via the Jubilee Line, while the solutions suggested by a&o include the London Docklands Riverside, the group’s first London facility, inaugurated at the end of 2025 in a former hotel building overlooking the Thames. The property has its own jetty and a river link to Canary Wharf, from which you can access the tube and the Elizabeth Line.
The location allows you to build a stay focused on the eastern part of the city, alternating the concert in Greenwich, Canary Wharf, Tower Bridge and the port areas that have changed the face of London in recent decades, while maintaining rapid connections with the centre.
Berlin, a city that continues to live through music
After London, Muse will arrive on November 18th at the Uber Arena in Berlin, in the Friedrichshain district, for the only German stop of the tour scheduled in the capital. The date is confirmed by the arena’s official calendar and will precede the Italian concerts in Milan and the subsequent ones in Düsseldorf.
Berlin has a different relationship with music from that of London, because its contemporary identity was formed as much through rock and electronica as through the spaces reconverted after the fall of the Wall, when industrial buildings, power plants and abandoned areas became clubs, cultural centers and places of experimentation.
The Uber Arena is located next to the East Side Gallery and not far from Kreuzberg, making it possible to concentrate the concert, the visit to the remains of the Wall and the exploration of some of the most dynamic neighborhoods of the German capital in just a few days. Those who also want to include monumental Berlin in their trip can easily reach Museum Island, the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
The a&o Berlin Hauptbahnhof is located about a ten minute walk from the central station and offers both private rooms and shared accommodation, with a location designed especially for those arriving by train or needing to leave quickly after the concert. The structure is less than half a kilometer from the center indicated by the chain and is connected to the subway, tram and urban railway network.
Düsseldorf becomes the fan capital of Europe
The real protagonist of music tourism in autumn 2026, however, could be Düsseldorf, which in the space of two months will host ten Backstreet Boys concerts and two Muse shows, attracting audiences from Germany and the rest of Europe.
Muse will be at the PSD Bank Dome on November 24th and 25th, the last two German dates of their autumn calendar. The double stage offers the possibility to choose between two consecutive evenings or to extend your stay, taking advantage of the Rhine riverfront, the contemporary architecture of the MedienHafen, the art galleries and the Altstadt, the historic center known for its exceptional concentration of clubs and pubs.
Düsseldorf is often considered above all a financial and trade fair city, but the calendar of major events is strengthening its role as a cultural destination, favored by an international airport, its proximity to Cologne and the possibility of easily reaching numerous German, Belgian and Dutch cities.
The a&o Düsseldorf Hauptbahnhof is located near the central station and about 200 meters from the area considered central by the hotel, a useful location both for reaching the PSD Bank Dome and for moving towards the Merkur Spiel-Arena, located in the northern part of the city.
The Backstreet Boys return to where it all began
From September 25th to October 7th, Düsseldorf will also host Into the Millennium – Homecoming: Live in Germanythe series of ten concerts with which the Backstreet Boys will bring their only European shows of 2026 to the Merkur Spiel-Arena.
The dates are 25, 26, 27, 29 and 30 September and 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7 October, with the last appointment added after the strong demand recorded by the first presales.
The choice of Germany also has a biographical value for the group, because it was precisely the German market that supported the Backstreet Boys during the first phase of their career, when European success preceded their definitive consecration in the United States. The country awarded the band their first platinum record for I’ll Never Break Your Heartbecoming a sort of second home during the years in which the band was building its international audience.
The show will take over the universe of Millenniumthe 1999 album that contains songs like I Want It That Way And Larger Than Lifetransforming Düsseldorf into a meeting point for fans from different generations and countries. More than a traditional tour stop, the formula resembles a temporary residency, capable of concentrating the same international community in a single city for almost two weeks.
The BTS effect: over 717 thousand spectators traveling across Europe
Showing the extent to which a concert can temporarily redesign tourist flows was the return of BTS this summer, who attracted over 717 thousand spectators to Europe with ten sold-out shows in Madrid, Brussels, London, Munich and Paris. The two final evenings alone at the Stade de France welcomed 92 thousand people each, marking the record audience ever reached by the group for a single concert and transforming Paris into the meeting point of an international community arriving from different countries.
The impact was also evident in Madrid, where BTS’ dates on June 26 and 27, along with ten Bad Bunny concerts and other major events hosted during the month, helped push the hotel industry to its highest level ever recorded in June for average rate and revenue per available room. On the evening of BTS’s first concert, hotel occupancy reached 89.5%, while the average price of a room rose to 229.29 euros and the revenue per available room to 205.15 euros.
The case of the seven Korean artists demonstrates that musical tourism no longer coincides only with the travel necessary to attend a show, but can become a transnational itinerary built following the stages of the tour, while hotels, transport, restaurants and cultural activities gather a demand that arises from music and is distributed across the entire urban economy.
From the concert to the city break
The success of concert tourism tells of a broader transformation of travel, which has become less and less dependent on traditional tourist seasons and increasingly linked to personal motivations, passions and unrepeatable events. A city can be chosen because it hosts a sports final, a festival, an exhibition or the only European date of an artist, while the rest of the itinerary is built only at a later time.
London offers the history of British music and the energy of a metropolis that never stops producing culture, Berlin allows you to cross the European twentieth century and its subsequent reinventions in just a few kilometres, while Düsseldorf shows how even a less immediate destination can become the center of tourist flows thanks to an exceptional musical programme.
The concert remains the moment around which everything is organised, but the journey begins long before the lights are turned on on stage and continues after the last encore, between a walk along the Rhine, a run on the Thames or a night in the Berlin neighbourhoods: the music establishes the date, but it is the city that completes the experience.
