North America's time as host of the best soccer players the world has to offer has come to an end, but the results of the tournament are worth reflecting upon for the hotel industry.
Jan Freitag, national director of hospitality analytics at CoStar Group, and Peter Yeung, managing director of the Walker Hotels Collection in New York City, joined the "CoStar News Hotels Podcast" to recap hotel performance and lessons learned from the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Yeung said his properties — the Walker Hotel Greenwich Village and the Walker Tribeca Hotel — saw occupancies north of 90% and a rate premium of more than 25% this past weekend when East Rutherford, New Jersey, hosted the World Cup final between Spain and Argentina.
"Anytime you have a sporting event of this world magnitude, the excitement is electric in a sense that you have people from all different cultures and all different backgrounds celebrating the unity of a sport, and you can imagine the passion behind that. For people to travel maybe long distances, or even driving into the city and the area, is a commitment, and it's because of the energy that someone wants to be a part of," he said.
The smaller markets, such as Guadalajara, Monterrey and Kansas City, were among the biggest winners from hosting World Cup matches, Freitag said. Markets such as Dallas, New York City and Los Angeles enjoyed growth in revenue per available room mostly through a boost in rate.
Looking ahead, the United States will either fully host or partially host the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, the 2031 FIFA Women's World Cup and the 2034 Salt Lake City Olympics. Yeung said from an operational side, the biggest takeaway he had from this event to apply to others was to make travel as easy and safe as possible for the guest.
"You want to make them feel like the hotel is knowledgeable about the event, and that they feel good about booking your hotel specifically," he said. "That's one thing we learned here is that providing information and knowledge, and having a traveler feel safe about coming to your city, is important."
Freitag said one of his takeaways was to be patient with bookings, because the booking window didn't materially change from a standard summer pattern.
"I was super surprised that the booking window did not change as much as I thought it should," he said. "A lot of reporters we talked to were like, 'Oh my God, does that mean nobody's coming?' It turns out that the booking window was not different from any other week (or) from any other major event, that people just took a long time."
For more from CoStar's Jan Freitag and the Walker Hotel Collection's Peter Yeung, listen to the podcast embedded above.