Hotels in the United States are drastically reducing rates during this summer’s soccer World Cup in the northern hemisphere, as executives warn that ticket prices, inflation fears and anti-American sentiment are leading fans to scale back their travel plans.
Room rates in host cities including Atlanta, Dallas, Miami, Philadelphia and San Francisco are down about a third from their peak earlier this year, according to data analytics firm Lighthouse Intelligence, a sign of lower-than-expected demand.
“I’m seeing a lot of people panic and lower their rates,” said Scott Yesner, founder of Bespoke Stay, a Philadelphia-based boutique hotel and vacation rental management company.
Many in the hotel industry had hoped the World Cup, which the United States will host alongside Canada and Mexico, would help reverse the drop in travel to the country last year, when revenue per available room declined for the first time since the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA, world football’s governing body, told host cities in 2024 that they should expect “hundreds of thousands” of guests, including not just the “lucky few” with tickets to the games but also “many, many more who will come just to be part of something special.”
But Vijay Dandapani, president of the New York Hotel Association, said he could “categorically say that we have not yet seen a significant increase. It is possible that we will see an increase in demand, but at this point it will certainly not be the abundance that FIFA promised.”
FIFA itself canceled thousands of hotel room reservations contracted for its technical committees and teams. While initial overcrowding was expected, cancellations exceeded hoteliers’ expectations, leaving them with “too many rooms available for sale in the period between games,” said Jan Freitag, an analyst at hotel data firm CoStar.
Lior Sekler, commercial director at hotel operator HRI Hospitality, said expectations that the World Cup would “attract a lot of people” — both in the host cities and in neighboring regions, who expected an influx of fans extending their holidays — “simply did not materialize.”
He cited dissatisfaction with Donald Trump’s administration and its visa and immigration policies, as well as instability caused by the war in Iran, as main reasons for the cooling in international demand: “Obviously, people’s desire to come to the United States is now at an all-time low.”
Aran Ryan, director of sector studies at Tourism Economics, said the research group still expects a “gradual increase, but there is concern about ticket prices, border crossings and anti-US sentiment — and this has been exacerbated by the war with Iran.”
The company now forecasts a 3.4% increase in the number of international visitors to the U.S. this year, down from a 3.9% estimate in December.
Rosanna Maietta, president of the American Hotel & Lodging Association, said the more than 2 million World Cup tickets sold to date have not “translated into the level of hotel bookings typically associated with an event of this magnitude.”
Exceptionally high ticket prices for the games and renewed fears of inflation stemming from the war in the Middle East have also led some travelers to reduce their spending, according to Dandapani, with airfares expected to rise due to rising fuel prices.
Football Supporters Europe, a fans’ association, estimated that a fan would need to spend at least US$6,900 (R$34,500) on tickets to follow their team from the opening game to the final of the 2026 World Cup, almost five times the cost of the last tournament in Qatar.
For Europeans, at least, these higher costs and new inflationary pressures could be enough motivation to postpone the trip until 2030, when the tournament will take place in Spain, Portugal and Morocco, according to CoStar’s Freitag.
Yesner said Bespoke Stay’s short-term rentals are performing better than its hotels, suggesting fan groups may be looking to save money by sharing a single property.
Domestic demand could at least partly offset a drop in foreign visitors, but hoteliers’ optimistic goals depend on international visitors who typically “stay longer and spend more while they’re here,” according to Ed Grose, executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Hotel Association.
He said hotel bookings in Philadelphia were, so far, “stable but not frantic — not at the level our members anticipated.” He still held out hope for a last-minute surge in demand, as industry executives noted that travelers are increasingly leaving reservations until the last minute.
Hoteliers themselves may also bear some responsibility for the unexpected slowdown in bookings, according to Ryan of Tourism Economics.
“If hotels thought they could demand multi-night stays at premium prices,” he said, “perhaps expectations were too high.”
