Editor's Note: Some linked articles may be behind subscription paywalls.
1. Hotel workers not enjoying the benefits of World Cup boost
While the 2026 FIFA World Cup has strongly boosted hotel performance in host markets, workers in those cities are not exactly enjoying the benefits in the same way, The New York Times reports.
The newspaper reports many hotel workers are still seeing cut hours and limited earning potential, highlighting Santos González Lobos, a 61-year-old kitchen worker at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites.
"As his hours have been cut, he has often worried about losing the health insurance he gets if he works 60 hours a month and how he’ll cover his wife’s expensive medication," the Times reports. "To make up for the lost hours, he has drained some of his savings and used vacation days to pad his paycheck."
2. LA hotels see rush of last minute match bookings
The World Cup news isn't all bad, though, with the Los Angeles Times noting the city saw a significant wave of last-minute hotel bookings around matches.
“Demand has picked up, consistent with a recent trend toward shorter booking windows for events of this caliber,” Rosanna Maietta, CEO of the American Hotel & Lodging Association, said in a statement to the newspaper. “Unlike typical leisure travel, many travelers finalized plans and secured tickets closer to the start of the games.”
3. A look at the negative aspects of AI's rise in hotels
While artificial intelligence has proven to be a strong productivity booster in businesses such as hotels, there are less positive aspects of its sudden rise, CoStar News' Natalie Harms reports, including "cognitive offloading."
That last phrase is a term referring to handing over executive function to AI, leading to a decline in critical-thinking skills, Lyle Worthington, European Union operations adviser for HFTP, said at the recent HITEC conference.
"It is incredibly important that we understand the repercussions of our actions," Worthington said. "It's incredibly important that we understand both sides of every argument, because that's how we think critically, and that's how we solve problems — only through education. We have educators and discussions so we can steer this shift towards abundance."
4. A dozen dead, more missing in latest Spanish wildfire
The BBC reports at least 12 people are dead with 23 others missing in a wildfire in southern Spain. The fires in Andalusia are tied to a sustained heatwave across southern Europe.
Antonio Sanz, Andalusia's health and emergencies minister, describe it as the "most devastating fire" that Andalusia had ever seen, according to the news outlet.
5. Netherlands sees wave of Harry Styles-induced hotel demand
Fortune reports hotel prices jumped 21% in the Netherlands thanks to demand induced by Harry Styles' 10-day residency in Amsterdam, noting that figure was strong enough to add 0.4 percentage points to the full country's monthly inflation rate for May.
“Harry Styles really breaks everything,” Bas ter Weel, director of monetary affairs at the Dutch central bank, told a Dutch news outlet.