New York Hotel Bookings Are Showing No Sign of World Cup Boost

City hotels have sold just 18% of available rooms between June 13, date of the first match at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, and July 19, when the venue hosts the World Cup final. The comparable figure this time a year ago was 26%, according to data compiled by CoStar Group Inc. earlier this month.

It’s not just New York. Boston, Vancouver and Toronto are all tracking below last year’s trends, the CoStar data shows. The host city getting the biggest boost is Dallas, where advance bookings are running 11 percentage points ahead of last year’s pace. Los Angeles and Houston are among the cities with more modest boosts.

“The World Cup doesn’t look as strong as what we had hoped,” Chris Nassetta, chief executive officer of Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc., said at a Semafor conference in Washington last week.

There’s still time for bookings to improve as excitement builds around the tournament. Travelers have been splashing out for years on live experiences from Taylor Swift concerts to sports, and FIFA President Gianni Infantino recently said he was “sure that all hotels will be pretty fully booked” when the festivities start.

“Ticket demand has been unprecedented,” Infantino said at the same conference where the Hilton boss spoke. “All those who buy tickets, they probably need to sleep somewhere.”

But the lagging performance so far contrasts with the hopes stoked last year when Infantino said that the tournament’s 104 matches would be like having that many Super Bowls squeezed into a little more than a month in the three host countries, the US, Canada and Mexico.

“On the nights leading up to games, we expect occupancy to be healthy and room rates to be robust,” said Jan Freitag, national director of hospitality analytics at CoStar. “But we don’t expect the impact of the World Cup to be like 104 Super Bowls.”

In a statement Thursday, the US Travel Association expressed concern about what it said was a push to discourage World Cup travel as a way of opposing Trump administration policies such as stepped-up visa fees and social media vetting.

“The notion that visiting America poses a meaningful safety risk is not a good-faith warning, it’s a political tactic designed to cause economic harm,” Geoff Freeman, the trade group’s president, said in the statement.

Room Rates

Not all hotels are giving up their aspirations for a World Cup bonanza. The Hampton Inn Carlstadt, near MetLife Stadium, is asking more than $4,000 in all-in costs for a stay on the night before the final match. A week later, after the tournament is over, the same hotel would cost about $300.

On the other hand, the Hampton Inn Times Square in Manhattan is asking $700 for the same night, more than double the price a week later.

The stakes are especially high in New York, where hotels are still recovering from the pandemic, which slammed the industry and left the accommodations workforce about a quarter below pre-Covid levels. Room rate have climbed to nominal records but inflation-adjusted profitability remains well below the pre-pandemic peak, the Hotel Association of New York City said in a report from JLP+D.

The World Cup was supposed to turn things around, thanks in no small part to international visitors.

Travelers from abroad make up less than a fifth of total arrivals but account for roughly half of all spending, laying out about four times what a domestic traveler spends. The flow of foreign visitors was already coming in below projections before this year, deterred by visa delays, a strong dollar and reduced flight capacity from key markets in Asia and Latin America.

The cost of getting to the matches isn’t helping the World Cup’s appeal.

New Jersey Transit will charge fans $150 for a roundtrip between Penn Station and MetLife Stadium, saying the enormous fare increase was needed to cover the agency’s additional expenses during the tournament. Tickets on special shuttle buses will run $80.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul called the train fare “awfully high.” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, said FIFA’s hosting model amounts to a “shakedown” that shifts transportation and security costs onto states and cities while soccer’s governing body keeps ticket and broadcast revenue.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani, an avid soccer fan, has moved to address at least one source of visitor irritation: banning hidden hotel fees and requiring all mandatory charges to be disclosed upfront. That’s a direct shot at the drip pricing that has made New York’s already high room rates feel pricier still.

The broader stakes are considerable. Hotels anchor a tourism economy that supports roughly 388,000 jobs across the city and generates billions in annual tax revenue. A potential hotel workers strike ahead of contract talks this year would disrupt operations during what should be the industry’s strongest stretch in years. The current contract expires in June.

Hoteliers say they’re hoping for a surge in bookings from around the world as the tournament gets closer. New York has an array of exciting matches, with Brazil playing Morocco in the first game at MetLife Stadium and subsequent contests featuring such leading teams as France, Germany and England. The venue will then host elimination games and the final.

“If the city is to maximize the economic benefits of the upcoming World Cup, our hotels must be able to attract as many visitors as possible,” said Vijay Dandapani, president of the Hotel Association of New York City.

By Myles Miller and Patrick Clark

With assistance from Kate Seaman