We’re now less than a week out from Taylor Swift bringing her Eras Tour Down Under, with shows kicking off in Melbourne this Friday.
Dedicated Swifties from all over the country (and even from neighbouring countries) are flying into Sydney and Melbourne for the shows, with flight bookings to Sydney up 184 per cent around the days of her concerts.
Travelling for a Taylor show is, in itself, a very exciting experience. But one Airbnb host has decided to make it extra special for her guests, filling her home with Taylor-themed décor and leaving gifts for the Swifties who’ll be staying there.
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“I received a message more than six months out from a woman in New Zealand who said that she was bringing her daughter to Sydney for the Taylor Swift show and would I host them? It was a no-brainer for me,” Nicole McKenna told 9Honey.
McKenna has been a fan of Swift since 2013, when she took her eight-year-old daughter, Mia, to the Red Tour.
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“I know what it’s like to have kids who love her, so I really wanted to help that mum make a beautiful Taylor Swift experience in Sydney with her daughter,” she said.
McKenna sourced some Taylor-themed linen for the bed (“it has lots of images of her cats and is very cute”), and bought the Little Golden Book about Taylor for the guest’s daughter.
“We also have an extra VIP package from the tickets we bought for ourselves that I will give to the young girl as a gift,” she says. “My girls and I are also thinking about what decorations might be nice.”
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McKenna says that watching her daughters see Taylor perform live, back in 2013, is one of her favourite memories.
“I still remember her, so little, completely in awe of the whole experience,” she said. “No-one puts on a show like Taylor Swift.”
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She also knows what it’s like to travel across the pond to see Taylor, having taken her daughters to see the Reputation tour in Auckland.
“We were all meant to go to the Reputation Tour in Sydney in 2018, but I was diagnosed with leukaemia in June of that year and was busy having a bone marrow transplant when we were meant to be at the concert.”
So, she treated her daughters to a trip to New Zealand. “They had had a pretty rough year with me being sick, and my eldest daughter had just turned 18 so it felt like a great thing for them to do as sisters.”
Though the house is (obviously) already booked for the Taylor weekend, McKenna’s Paddington home can be rented on Airbnb for travellers to Sydney.
