With the 2026 FIFA World Cup set to begin June 11, hotel operators across the United States are reporting that the booking boom many anticipated has failed to arrive. An April survey by the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) found that room demand was lagging in most of the 11 American host cities. Operators in Kansas City, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle described bookings that were below typical seasonal levels, while hotels in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Houston saw flat demand compared with a regular spring and summer.
“I think everyone had hoped the games would lead to an influx of bookings, but with all going on in the world and the USA’s involvement, events are playing out differently for everyone,” said Michael Black, general manager at the Cloud One hotel in Manhattan.
The hotel trade group blamed several factors, including anxiety about international travel, long U.S. visa wait times, and the steep cost of attending the tournament — itself driven by high ticket prices and expensive transit in some host cities.
Many hotels sharply raised their room rates after FIFA announced the match schedule, wagering that soccer fans would pay a premium. Near MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, a hotel that normally charges about $200 per night was advertising rates of $800 on match nights, with prices surpassing $1,300 ahead of the July 19 final.
Ronan Evain, executive director of the fan advocacy group Football Supporters Europe, said experienced tournament travelers are likely waiting for those rates to fall. “Fans that are used to traveling for tournaments know that this price will always go down,” Evain said. “There are many examples of hotel owners regretting that they priced too high and then panicking at the last minute and reducing prices.”
As hotel prices have soared, some fans have shifted to short-term rentals. AirDNA, a data firm that tracks bookings on Airbnb and Vrbo, reported an uptick in short-term rental bookings in the metropolitan areas around Kansas City, Seattle, San Francisco, Dallas/Fort Worth, and Miami/Ft. Lauderdale compared with the same period last year. Airbnb said last week that it now expects the tournament to surpass the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris as the largest hosting event in its history.
The pattern extends south to co-host Mexico. Hotels in Mexico City, which will stage the opening match, were only 30% to 36% booked, according to the Asociación de Hoteles de Ciudad de México, underscoring the regional breadth of the softer demand.
Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College, noted that while millions of fans are expected to travel for the matches, mega-events often displace other visitors. “The general problem is that soccer tourists — and expected congestion, high prices and security concerns — push away normal business travel and tourism,” he said.
In New York City, Vijay Dandapani, president of the Hotel Association of New York City, said city hotels are seeing a modest summer booking increase of roughly 10% compared with the previous year, but “nowhere close to the windfall promised by FIFA and other tournament boosters.”
In Vancouver, Canada, which is hosting seven matches, hotel occupancy is lower than at the same time last year, though Paul Hawes, CEO of the British Columbia Hotel Association, said the industry remains optimistic that business will pick up closer to the games.
In Kansas City, where about 90% of hotel operators in the AHLA survey reported bookings below their expectations, tourism officials are still forecasting a record influx. “While hotel occupancy in Kansas City has not followed the trajectory originally predicted by FIFA, there are positive indicators for Kansas City on the horizon,” said Derik Detter, market research director at Visit KC.
Jon Bortz, CEO of Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, a real estate investment company that owns dozens of hotels nationally, said occupancy rates at the company’s host-city properties are up compared with last year, though he acknowledged that cities with more marquee matchups, such as Boston, are performing better than cities like San Francisco that host less in-demand games. “We haven’t seen anything that would cause us to think it’s going to be less than what we were expecting,” he said. “Maybe other people had much grander expectations.”