NEW YORK — With the expanded international football tournament now less than three weeks from its opening match on U.S. soil, hotel owners and operators across the eleven American host cities are confronting an uncomfortable reality: the booking surge many spent years and millions of dollars preparing for has so far failed to materialize at the scale industry forecasts promised.
The tournament, which will run across venues in cities including New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Miami, and Seattle, was projected by the American Hotel and Lodging Association to generate $4.2 billion in direct hospitality revenue during the six weeks of play. Operators who built new properties, renovated existing ones, or locked in costly inventory commitments on the basis of those projections now say advance bookings are running 22 to 35 percent below what they expected at this point in the pre-event cycle.
Industry data compiled by hospitality analytics firm Beacon Rate Intelligence showed that average daily room rates in host cities for the tournament period are currently tracking at $287, compared with a pre-event forecast of $341. Occupancy projections have also softened, with current forward bookings pointing to roughly 73 percent occupancy during group-stage weeks, against an industry consensus estimate of 84 percent produced eighteen months ago.
Marcus Delgado, general manager of a 420-room convention hotel in Dallas that declined to be identified by name, said the property built its entire summer staffing and purchasing model around numbers that now look optimistic. He said the situation was not yet a crisis but required difficult conversations with vendors and contract workers as management recalibrated its forecasts.
Hospitality economists offered several explanations for the gap. The most commonly cited factor was the price sensitivity of the international fan base the tournament was expected to attract. Visitors from South America and Africa, who make up a large share of the traveling support for several qualified nations, have faced steep U.S. visa processing backlogs and airfare prices that have risen faster than anticipated. The average round-trip transatlantic or transpacific airfare to a U.S. host city for the tournament period is currently running at roughly $1,840, according to data from travel aggregator Wanderfare, approximately 28 percent above the same metric for a comparable European tournament held four years ago.
A second factor, analysts said, was the tournament’s expanded format. With 48 nations competing across 104 matches spread over six weeks, no single game carries the guaranteed sold-out significance of a 32-team format. Some fans who might have planned a two-week trip centered on their national team’s knockout-round matches have instead opted for shorter visits or decided to watch from home, waiting to see how their teams perform before committing to travel.
Dr. Sophia Renner, a sports economist at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, said the expanded format was sold to sponsors and host cities as a way to grow the market but may have actually diluted the urgency that drives last-minute premium booking. When every fan knows their team has three guaranteed group-stage matches, she said, the fear-of-missing-out calculus changes.
Not all operators shared the same concerns. Hotels within walking distance of stadiums in Miami and New York reported near-full occupancy for specific match dates, particularly games involving teams with historically high-travel support bases. The divergence suggested the boom was occurring in concentrated pockets rather than across entire markets, creating winners and losers within the same host cities.
Tournament organizers declined to comment on the hospitality data but said ticket sales had exceeded 3.1 million, representing 94 percent of available inventory, and that ancillary revenue from broadcasting rights and sponsorship was on track with projections. They noted that a significant share of tournament attendees book accommodation through short-term rental platforms rather than traditional hotels, which would not appear in lodging industry data.
Hotel owners hoping for a late surge pointed to historical patterns from previous major sporting events, where a meaningful percentage of bookings arrive within the final three to four weeks. Whether that trend holds for a first-time U.S.-hosted global football tournament, at a moment when international travel costs remain elevated and visa uncertainties persist, remained an open question that the industry would be forced to answer in real time.
Industry associations representing hotel owners in host cities plan to convene an emergency working session in late May to assess the booking data collectively and determine whether a coordinated marketing push targeting domestic travelers could partially offset the shortfall from international arrivals. Several operators said they had already begun offering last-minute promotional rates for the group-stage weeks that were well below their original revenue targets, a sign that the calculus of maximizing yield had given way to a more defensive strategy of filling rooms before the tournament begins.