The World Cup Tourism Boom Was a Myth

0:00ZS is a global consulting and technology firm that partners with companies to improve life and how we live it. Working with the world's top hospitality brands, ZS brings together data, science, technology, and human ingenuity to transform ideas into customer loyalty. They're ready to help you elevate guest experiences, improve operations, and uncover preferences and motivations through their AI-powered solutions. With more than 1 ,700 clients in over 170 countries, ZS has built the expertise, fortitude, and vision to help you deliver impact right where it matters.

0:48Sarah Dandashy: The World Cup is over and the verdict on tourism is in. United Airlines tried to merge with both Delta and American and got turned down by both. And Europe just fined Google half a billion dollars for something the travel industry does to its own suppliers every single day. I'm Sarah Dandeshi. It's Tuesday, July 28th, and this is the SCIFT Daily Briefing. First up, the 2026 World Cup promised to be a once-in-a-generation tourism windfall. Organizers projected$30 billion in economic output for the U.S., Over a million international visitors and hotels packed to the rafters. But what actually happened was a lot more complicated.

1:27Sarah Dandashy: International arrivals in June, the heart of the tournament, fell 1.8 % year over year. That's a decline on top of last year's decline. Overseas fans simply didn't show up in the numbers the forecast assumed. A Skift research survey found 46 % of travelers were less likely to visit the U.S., specifically because of the current political environment, rising to 59 % among Germans and 62 % among Canadians. Hotels still made money, but by charging more, not by hosting more people. Revpar, Revenue Per Available Room, jumped over 100 % on some match days, but many hotels had priced so aggressively in anticipation of a boom that they ended up cutting rates 30 % once actual demand came in softer than expected.

2:11Sarah Dandashy: Here's why this matters beyond the summer. Los Angeles is hosting the 2028 Olympics, financed on the same assumptions. The international tourist, who was supposed to fill 40 percent of World Cup crowds, mostly stayed home. If that pattern holds in 2028, cities win on rim rates and lose on volume. And it's the volume that justifies the public money. Next up, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby had big merger ambitions this year. He approached Delta about combining the two carriers into what would have been the largest airline in the world. Delta looked at it and walked away. He also floated the idea of a United American merger to the White House.

2:47Sarah Dandashy: American CEO Robert Isom shut it down using the now famous line, we're going to be roommates and we're not getting married. Kirby has since said that he's not interested in smaller deals either, specifically ruling out JetBlue, which he called idiotic as an acquisition target. So where does this leave the airline consolidation? Largely stalled. Delta's CEO says that he sees consolidation as more likely among distressed carriers than big ones. But even among ultra-low-cost carriers, merger talk has mostly fizzled out since Allegiant closed the deal with Sun Country in May. The takeaway? The Iran war was supposed to trigger a wave of airline M &A.

3:24Sarah Dandashy: So far, the industry is mostly focused on fixing its own profitability rather than buying its way to scale. And finally, the European Commission fined Google$525 million this week for favoring its own hotel and travel results in search. The travel industry cheered, but Skiff's Rafat Ali noticed something worth calling out. Nearly every company applauding the Google fine, Booking Holdings, Expedia, TripAdvisor, they run their own version of the same system. Booking lets hotels pay for better visibility through its preferred partner program. Expedia sells a product called Accelerator, where hotels pay extra to improve their rankings.

4:01Sarah Dandashy: Travago, which is suing Google for unfair ranking, was itself fined$30 million in Australia for putting the highest-paying hotel at the top of results, not the best-value one. The pattern is the same at every level. Organize the choices, capture the demand, sell the position. Google does it, the OTAs do it, Metasearch does it, and now AI assistants are becoming the next layer, with ChatGPT already running ads alongside its travel answers. So in a nutshell, everyone in travel wants their fair ranking from the platform above them while selling position to the suppliers below. The Google find is real and warranted, but it's also a mirror the whole industry should probably be looking into.

4:41Sarah Dandashy: Well, that's it for your Skiff Daily Briefing. For more industry news, head to skiff.com and as always, subscribe at skiff.com backslash daily. Thanks so much for listening.

5:01ZS is a global consulting and technology firm that partners with companies to improve life and how we live it. Working with the world's top hospitality brands, ZS brings together data, science, technology, and human ingenuity to transform ideas into customer loyalty. They're ready to help you elevate guest experiences, improve operations, and uncover preferences and motivations through their AI-powered solutions. With more than 1 ,700 clients in over 170 countries, ZS has built the expertise, fortitude, and vision to help you deliver impact right where it matters.