Soccer fans are booking American hotel rooms for the FIFA World Cup at a far lower rate than in Mexico and Canada.
Reservations for stays that coincide with the massive sports tournament, set to kick off across all three countries starting Thursday, have paled in the U.S. compared to bookings with the nation’s neighbors to the north and south, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The cities of Vancouver and Guadalajara have the highest occupancy rates, at 48 percent, the Journal reports, citing data from data analytics group CoStar.
“Toronto, Mexico City and Monterrey are also more than 40 percent-booked. San Francisco is the only U.S. city to crack that threshold at 44 percent,” the paper adds.
Fears about obtaining visas and concerns about the political climate in the U.S., especially reports of foreigners being detained at the airport, may have contributed to a lack of bookings ahead of the World Cup, according to the Journal.
“I think the media stories surrounding people who’ve been detained haven’t helped,” Jon Bortz, a top executive at Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, said.
The Journal reports that a number of hotel owners in 16 cities that are due to host games in the coming weeks said that they’re still seeing a decent number of people making reservations.
But those host cities are apparently at a significant disadvantage to their counterparts across America’s borders—especially given Mexico’s more firmly established love of the game and comparative affordability.
The question of cost has only become more pronounced as sales for this year’s tournament continue to break records. “Dozens of tickets to the final match [are] already selling for more than $20,000,” the Journal reports, based on figures from resale tracker TicketData. The cost of getting to the games has also increased drastically.
“When it got down to pricing and being able to make those decisions, there were a lot of aspirational travelers who were probably shut out of the marketplace,” said Dave Guenther, president at Roadtrips, a luxury sporting trip firm.
The Daily Beast contacted the White House for comment on this story.
“Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, the FIFA 2026 World Cup will no doubt be one of the greatest and most spectacular events in the history of mankind, attracting millions of fans from around the world to eleven host cities across America,” spokesperson Davis Ingle said.
“This will be a monumental event that requires close coordination between the Trump Administration, FIFA, and all of our great federal, state, and local partners,” he added. “President Trump is focused on ensuring that this is not only an incredible experience for all fans and visitors, but the also the safest and most secure in history.”
