Soft World Cup Demand Might Not Lead to Corp. Opportunity

Next month, 104 FIFA World Cup matches will come to 16 cities across three countries. But with just 35 days until kickoff, what to expect from hotel stays across the five weeks of the tournament is proving difficult.

To start, it's worth acknowledging that this year's event is larger in scope than any World Cup before it.

The 2026 tournament will feature 48 teams—16 more than in previous years, with 40 additional matches. The distance between the two farthest host cities, Vancouver and Mexico City, is also larger than it's ever been at more than 2,800 miles. Taken together, those changes make it challenging for analysts to leverage historical data to understand how this year's event will alter travel in the region.

"Ultimately, the 2026 World Cup is best understood as not a single tourism event, but as 16 distinct ones," Lodging Analytics Research & Consulting president and co-founder Ryan Meliker wrote in a report to clients last year.

The closest equivalent, according to Meliker, was the 2018 World Cup in Russia. That tournament spanned 12 cities and there was not a "universal boost" across all host cities.

In a report released this week by the American Hotel & Lodging Association, 80 percent of hoteliers surveyed April 7-21 across 11 U.S. host cities said hotel bookings are tracking below initial forecasts.

Some of the factors cited by AHLA survey respondents for the suppressed international demand include visa barriers and geopolitical concerns. Also, as AHLA highlighted in March, over-commitment of room blocks from FIFA produced artificial early demand signals that dissipated when much of the reserved room blocks were released with fewer bookings than expected.

The frustration palpable from the hospitality community in the AHLA surveys doesn't, however, mean that hotel rates in host markets in June and July are going to be cheap.

Meliker in a note to BTN said that the nature of the 2026 World Cup means that outsized demand growth for hoteliers always was going to be a challenge. Instead, his projections allow for "a sizable lift in [average daily rate] across a handful of key markets" and an expected increase in annual U.S. RevPAR of 1.5 percent, driven entirely by rate increases. 

A report released on Wednesday by FCM Consulting showed year-over-year rate spikes between 25 percent and nearly 75 percent in host cities. The top rate increases were noted in Vancouver, Toronto, Boston and the three Mexico host markets—Monterrey, Guadalajara and Mexico City. Markets with relatively low rate increases, either because of plenty of room supply or softer demand, include Dallas, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Houston and Philadelphia.

Rates in host markets aren't expected to be universally high throughout the tournament, however. Joint analyses by Data Appeal, Mabrian and PredictHQ found significant variation in demand across not just in cities but also match stages and hotel categories.

The Data Appeal report found the strongest pricing power centered around the inaugural match in Mexico City (up 49 percent year over year), the third-place match in Miami (up 26 percent year over year) and the final in northern New Jersey, with pricing power in nearby New York City up 11 percent year over year.

"This wide gap highlights that not all World Cup matches generate the same level of hotel demand," the report stated. "Only the most high-profile events create significant pricing pressure, while others behave more like standard high-demand periods."

Rates are also not climbing the same across hotel chain scales. Pricing at five- and four-star properties is growing much more year over year than three-star properties, according to the Data Appeal report. 

The last time we saw this potential scope and level of travel disruption was in 2024 during Taylor Swift's Eras tour. At the time, the U.S. Travel Association characterized the tour's effect on hotel and travel as equivalent to the Super Bowl taking place on 53 nights in 20 different cities.

One difference with the Eras tour and the World Cup, however, is that most concert dates focused on weekends; business travelers could avoid competing for the same room nights as Swifties. Of the 104 fixtures in June and July, 57 are scheduled for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.

The FCM report cautioned that corporate negotiated rates may not hold on and around fixture dates.

"Organizations need to be prepared and should prioritize booking early within existing contracts or negotiating specific provisions for the tournament period,” head of FCM Consulting for the Americas Ashley Gutermuth said in a statement.

Kalibri Labs SVP of commercial strategy Jennifer Hill said the lower-than-forecast demand also presents an opportunity for buyers.

"[Hotels] are going to be looking for business to fill the gaps," Hill said during a BTN event on Thursday. "Check in with them—earlier rather than later."