Report: U.S. Hotels See Underwhelming Demand for World Cup

[ergophobe]

65-70 percent of respondents across markets say visa barriers and broader geopolitical concerns are significantly suppressing international demand. These factors consistently rank as the top constraint on World Cup-driven travel.

https://www.travelagentcentral.com/hotels/ahla-world-cup-hotel-performance

[littleman]

Would you come here right now?  I hope they didn't spend too much on that FIFA prize.

[ergophobe]

Now that I just run one little rental, I don't have access to large datasets for hotels, so only anecdotal info.

However, when I did market hotels, the second biggest demo was UK visitation (bigger than Canada or Mexico). Foreign visitation ran in the low 20 percent range with UK alone being in the high teens, sometimes 20% by itself.

That was always roughly true with my anecdotal one-apartment dataset. But the last two years, we have had less than 5% foreign. We just got a booking from the UK last week and I realized that it had been ages since we had had one.

From my very very very limited dataset, lots of foreigners seem to be opting out of US trips. Not all, though. I ran into a French family while hiking recently and we ended up second in line on a climb behind a Canadian couple in Red Rocks (near Vegas) a couple weeks ago.

Also, in the national parks, we are actively chasing away foreign visitors - they are being hit with a $100/person 16+ surcharge to enter. A family with two parents, a child 16+ and a child under 16 would now pay $335 to enter Yosemite instead of $35 for a similar family with US residency.

[Rupert]

My wife was in LA last month, to see the old relative who has just turned 100. (Congrats Aunty Marg ) .  But my sister has said she wont go to the US at present.

[ergophobe]

>>  wont go to the US at present

Would she consider a trip to China or Russia or the Philippines?

I think it's not just the recent US policies foreign and domestic, it's the "apostasy" of the United States.

Apostasy: the formal, total abandonment or renunciation of a religious faith, principles, or a cause previously held

In the Reformation era, Protestants held apostates in particular disdain. They could forgive most of the rank and file "papists" and Jews and "Turks" who had never seen the light, but they expected those who had converted to the Reform to die at the stake rather than renounce.

There is something about the apostate (one of "us" who is now one of the "others") that is much worse to people than one of the others who has always been one of the others.

[Rupert]

>>  wont go to the US at present

Would she consider a trip to China or Russia or the Philippines?

Absolute NO to Russia.>  Way too cautious.  China and the Philippines would be on the list to visit I think.

[ergophobe]

That was my guess.

Philippines is on my mind because I just read Maria Ressa's memoir, How to Stand Up to a Dictator, about her life as a journalist in the Philippines. Things were very bad under Duterte and Freedom House continues to lower the Philippines rating even with Duterte gone.

Of course, the Philippines doesn't have the weight of the US to throw around on the world stage, which makes people more angry at the US. The Philippines has little ability to affect the life of someone in Britain, but I think the idea that China has never experienced an open society and the Philippines has only had a very brief democratic period between Marcos and Duterte makes their behavior forgivable.

By the way...

Freedom House gives Philippines a 58/100 score, which is pretty good ("partly free" in the FH system), as compared to 81 for the US and 92 for the UK and 9 for China and 100 for Finland.
https://freedomhouse.org/country/scores?sort=fiw&sort_order=asc

[ergophobe]

From Freedom House 2026 report, recently released

Among countries rated Free, the United States, Bulgaria, and Italy have experienced the year's largest declines. In the United States, an escalation in both legislative dysfunction and executive dominance, growing pressure on people's ability to engage in free expression, and the new administration's moves to undermine anticorruption safeguards all contributed to the negative score change. The United States lost 3 points on the report's 100-point scale, bringing its net decline since 2005 to 12 points, more than any other country rated Free during the same period except for Nauru and Bulgaria.

IN other words, on the FH scale, we have gone from a bit better than the UK to the same as South Africa.

https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2026/growing-shadow-autocracy