World Cup hotel demand in Boston falls short of forecasts, but rates surge
With record high ticket prices, expensive airfare and lower demand for hotel rooms, the overall picture for industry leaders, at least in Boston, is perhaps more mixed than expected.
It might just be the windfall that never materialized.
The influx of tourists and soccer fans spending money on hotels, airfare and other amenities to the 2026 FIFA World Cup was meant to be a boon to the hospitality industry. But with record high ticket prices, expensive airfare and lower demand for hotel rooms, the picture for industry leaders, at least in Boston, is perhaps more mixed than expected.
Evodio Kaltenecker, associate teaching professor in the D’Amore-McKim School of Business, isn’t surprised. He noted that across the business and hospitality sectors, the benefits of these international mega-sporting events are often overstated, adding that “the short-run results are often negative or mixed, and genuine long-term gains are mixed.”
“The central assumption behind event-driven tourism is straightforward: a large influx of sports fans fills hotels and boosts spending,” Kaltenecker said. “Fans do arrive, but regular tourists tend to leave.”
That’s because higher prices, congestion, security concerns and “the general disruption” these events cause tend to deter the kind of visitor who would otherwise have come — that is, the leisure traveler, the business traveler and the convention attendee. “So the net gain in visitor numbers is, at best, moderate,” Kaltenecker said.
The 2026 international soccer tournament — the sport’s pinnacle competition — is also unfolding at a politically and economically sensitive moment. High fuel prices, driven in part by instability in the Middle East, have made air travel more expensive for international visitors. Uncertainty over visas for travel and greater immigration enforcement may be discouraging some would-be travelers from making the trip to the U.S. Also, FIFA’s release of previously reserved hotel rooms back into the market weakened what many hoteliers initially interpreted as strong World Cup demand.
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The numbers may paint a clearer picture. In the days surrounding the first match at Boston Stadium on June 13, hotels near Foxborough charged significantly more than they did a year earlier, with average rates rising as much as 40%, while Boston properties posted gains of up to 30%, according to Sebastian Colella, managing principal at Pinnacle Advisory Group, a Boston-based an independent hospitality advisory firm. “The premiums in average daily rates we are seeing around match dates are massive,” he said.
For visitors, higher rates could contribute to the sticker shock that observers say may be dampening international travel demand.
Colella told Northeastern Global News that in general, the World Cup is not moving the needle with demand, or “occupied room nights,” a metric hoteliers use to measure the number of rooms sold over a given period.
Data released in May by the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA), the industry’s trade organization, backs that up. In its prospective “FIFA World Cup 2026 Hotel Outlook” report detailing the industry’s expectations for hotel demand during the tournament across the host cities, the AHLA’s survey data revealed that nearly 80% of hoteliers in cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle reported booking pace below expectations and behind a typical summer season.
“We are actually seeing demand decline through most of June,” Colella said.
Still, some businesses fare a lot better than others. Retail and food service near match locations tend to do well during event days, Kaltenecker said. And infrastructure and construction sectors benefit during the build-up phase, he said. But those jobs, he added, “are temporary and will never return.”
One of the tournament’s most visible winners in Boston may be the beer industry. Hardcore Scottish soccer supporters, nicknamed the “Tartan Army,” emptied the taps at Sam Adams’ Boston Taproom, the brewery told NGN. The brewery said out-of-towners consumed Boston Lager at a pace four times higher than a typical four-day holiday period.
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Kaltenecker noted that not all host cities are feeling the same effects. He said cities with established international reputations, infrastructure and many direct flight connections are likely to post better revenue. “Miami and Atlanta will perform much better than Kansas City, for instance,” he said.
Kansas City, which has received nearly $200 million in combined local, state and federal public funding for the World Cup, has faced some of the challenges critics warned about in advance of the tournament. FIFA reportedly walked away from 75% of the hotel rooms it had initially reserved in Kansas City, leaving the city to absorb the financial fallout.
Unlike Kansas City, Chicago opted out of hosting the 2026 World Cup, with city officials citing concerns about taxpayer costs.
Still, after the region hosts its six matches, Massachusetts hotel operators still expect the tournament to provide a healthy boost in hotel revenue across the region, not only in Boston but also in communities near Foxborough, such as Providence, Rhode Island, Colella said.
But any long-term benefits from these events are far from guaranteed — and are unlikely to be shared evenly, Kaltenecker said.
“International organizing bodies, such as FIFA and the Olympic Committee are usually overoptimistic about the economic impact on cities and countries of the large-scale events they promote,” he added. “This is a strategy to seduce countries and cities to host such events.”
