The World Cup may be boosting U.S. hotel performance so far this summer, but it's also complicating the broader summer travel picture.
And it's not just the World Cup. Events — especially in the middle of the week — are driving gains for hotels, data analysts and co-hosts of "Tell Me More: A Hospitality Data Podcast" said on their latest episode.
U.S. hotel demand in May was up 1.1% year over year from May 2025, and nearly all of that came in on Sunday through Thursday, indicating that business travel and events held during the week are strong.
Las Vegas hotels had 17.9% revenue per available room growth in May, thanks to several large events. And El Paso, Texas, notched the biggest RevPAR growth of all U.S. markets in May — coming in at 37.9% growth — all because of two sold-out concert dates by K-pop boy band BTS.
"It's good to see the midweek continue to do its thing and be strong," said Jan Freitag, national director of hospitality analytics for CoStar. "Group demand is back."
And so far in June, World Cup matches have spurred the largest U.S. average daily rate growth in more than a year.
However, Freitag and co-host Isaac Collazo, STR's senior director of analytics, reminded listeners that while one-off events are great for hotel performance, it's important to remember that they'll skew the data a year from now when hoteliers look to make year-over-year comparisons.
And what about traditional summer leisure travel and weekend trips? This is where visibility is a little muddy, Freitag said.
"When you look under the surface and dig into the Saturday night performance that is really driven by the American leisure traveler, are we seeing some signs of weakness because the inflation rate continues to be pretty high?" he asked.
Collazo countered that some of the traditional summer weekend leisure travel might instead be on the pitch this year.
"It's a high proportion of higher-income individuals who tent to travel for leisure, and given the World Cup, they would also be the ones at the games," he said. "Maybe people are choosing differently."
Also in this episode
- Collazo shares positive hotel performance in the Gulf Cooperation Countries in May because of travel related to the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha. The sharp performance declines in the United Arab Emirates in April due to the war in Iran did moderate a bit in May.
- The co-hosts share their thoughts about domestic travel around the upcoming Fourth of July holiday and America 250 celebrations.
- More World Cup data from the first two weekends of the tournament was discussed.