It's been a summer of surprises — most good, some not-so-good — surrounding U.S. hotel performance amid the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Topping the list of good surprises, according to the hosts of "Tell Me More: A Hospitality Data Podcast," was June hotel revenue per available room in the U.S. It grew 8.4% on a 6.7% average daily rate bump compared to June 2025.
And while the first half of the 2026 FIFA World Cup definitely was the catalyst, STR's Isaac Collazo pointed out that non-World Cup markets in the U.S. saw a 6.8% RevPAR jump.
Hotel demand displacement projections proved true, Collazo said. Analysts early on predicted traditional group business and even leisure travelers would avoid higher-priced World Cup cities this summer and instead choose other locations for their events and travel.
That's underlined by the fact that excluding World Cup markets in the U.S., June RevPAR would have come in at 6.8% growth on a 4.4% ADR gain.
Also in this episode:
- Co-host Jan Freitag, CoStar's national director of hospitality analytics, shared U.S. hotel transaction activity for the first half of 2026, noting that transaction volume in the second quarter was particularly strong.
- Collazo reported that year to date through June, U.S. RevPAR is up 4.8%, led by 3.5% ADR gains.