During the World Cup in South Africa in 2010, the hotel industry triumphed, seeing a 55.3% jump in income in June of that year compared to 2009. At the time, a little-known site called Airbnb existed, and had recently made the smart decision to stop calling itself “AirBed & Breakfast” (I’m not joking), but it was easily outclassed by hotels.
It’s 2026, and Airbnb is, of course, beating the crap out of the beleaguered hotels of the U.S., according to the Financial Times.
That’s at least during the tournament’s group stage, according to FT, which reports that this validates its reporting on a trend from back in April: hotels were not seeing the number bookings they had previously expected.
That publication reviewed analytics from AirDNA, which showed that across all short-term rental platforms, there were 52,000 added short-term rentals ahead of the World Cup—a 12% increase.
That likely explains why, according to another analytics company, CoStar, FT notes that hotels saw a decline in occupancy during the first 17 days of the World Cup. By way of an explanation, Aran Ryan of a third research firm called Tourism Economics told them that hotels in U.S. World Cup host cities had hiked prices 20% year-over-year.
It probably didn’t help matters that Airbnb rolled out a program to give $750 bonuses to new hosts with properties located near soccer venues, which Airbnb called “its biggest new host incentive program ever.”
As one example, FT pointed to Kansas City. Even though the supply of short-term rentals almost doubled locally, the average price across all short-term rental services rose 63% year over year, according to CoStar, with one thrilled Airbnb user crediting her boost in income to Airbnb’s built-in dynamic pricing tool called Smart Pricing. “Turn on Smart Pricing if you want your listing to be automatically competitively priced for your area—without you needing to constantly monitor it,” the Airbnb help center says.
Hotel occupancy in Kansas city, meanwhile, showed an 8.5% decline over the same period, according to CoStar.
Anecdotal reports in the FT suggest that not all hotels are suffering, even if bookings are down—particularly luxury hotels. Those, it seems, were able to jack prices up into the stratosphere, and may turn profits simply because they hosted delegations so affluent they made up for the decline in overall customer traffic.
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