We are merely days away from the FIFA World Cup, the most anticipated event in North American travel and hospitality in years, and the vibes related to the event have shifted significantly over the last year.
Now, there's been no shortage of prognostication about the event in terms of how it will affect hotel performance, going from the pronouncement that it will mark "104 Super Bowls" in terms of travel impact to waves of hotel room blocks being returned by FIFA to the more recent acceptance that the event is likely to be good in pockets if not great everywhere.
The latest, and perhaps most relevant, analysis of the entire thing came up in a recent episode of the CoStar News Hotels podcast with my colleagues Trevor Simpson and Didio Pequeno noting that rate will be the driver of performance during the event more than demand.
"When I talk to people, whether that be general managers or revenue managers around the country, I'm getting a lot of mixed signals, but I think the prevailing thought is that yes, the World Cup will still boost performance through the summer," Pequeno said. "Performance is going to vary market by market, some will perform better than others, of course, but it's not really about demand, it's more so about markets being able to drive rate."
The thing that is interesting to me about all this is despite some markets seeing group displacement, there is very little argument being made that the World Cup won't improve the overall demand equation for U.S. hotels this summer.
So ultimately, this entire discourse boils down to the old axiom that disappointment is the difference between hope and reality.
Sure, 2026 is slated to be demonstrably better than 2025, and the World Cup is likely to be a big part of that. And sure, last year the industry was in a slow slide into pessimism while this year has been on the opposite trajectory.
But the expectations were for a monstrously good summer with pricing power not seen since the initial wave of post-COVID revenge travel. We didn't get that, so the whole thing is a disappointment.
The whole thing leaves me wondering what the general perception of the summer would be right now if we weren't about to have the largest World Cup of all time.
Would things actually be more optimistic because of the surprise turn demand has taken since the start of the year? The absolute values of key performance metrics would surely be worse, but the general industry mindset would be more in a place of "things look better than we expected, so let's hope that momentum continues," rather than this lingering disappointment for not getting the earth-shattering win we hoped for.
So maybe this is a moment for industry-wide mindfulness and practicing gratitude over what we have rather than regret over what we missed out on.
Let me know what you think on LinkedIn or via email.
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