The FIFA World Cup is often thought of as a once-in-a-lifetime chance in many ways. It gives communities the greatest opportunity to showcase themselves, and many people feel that more visitors mean more hotel guests, more people eating out at restaurants, and more dollars for local businesses—all these things seem to be true for most potential World Cup hosts. But for some parts of Canada, primarily the city of Vancouver, the situation isn’t an example of this perceived thinking.
Many local businesses found themselves counting losses, rather than recording record profits. Many local business owners are admitting that they would have liked to have seen the tournament be over already so they could return to normal levels of tourism.
The most surprising thing so far has been not that there hasn’t been as many soccer fans visiting Canada for the World Cup, but what happened to everyone else who normally would travel to Canada.
Long before the tournament began, hotel prices soared to incredible highs, with lodging properties expecting huge numbers of international visitors in cities like Vancouver and Toronto. A night’s stay in some of these cities would cost upwards of $1,200!
Not only did these high prices deter soccer fans from coming to Canada, they also discouraged many tourists who normally make summer vacation plans to visit Canada. Tourists who normally make summer vacation plans to visit Canada, as well as organized tours, and family groups, discovered that their normal summer plans had turned from an affordable summer vacation to an outrageous summer vacation. Many cancelled their trips and decided to take vacations in cities that offer reasonable lodging rates.
Therefore, it is ironic that hotels in Canada which thought they were going to be totally booked because of the World Cup, actually have had a higher vacancy rate than they have over the last several years.
The tour operators experienced some of the worst impact of eliminating the city of Vancouver from their itineraries. This was due to the high cost of accommodations making it impossible for the operators to operate tours out of Vancouver.
The ripple effect continued beyond the city center. With organized tours gone from the Vancouver area, businesses like small souvenir shops, coffee shops, roadside stands and local attractions, that would have had group travel visitors, saw their customers drop off sharply during one of Canada’s busiest tourism periods.
Bill Bibby, an owner of a souvenir shop in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, expressed his frustrations about the disappointment of the World Cup not becoming the tourism bucket of gold that many had expected. Instead of coming to Vancouver and staying for weeks or days after the World Cup to enjoy other things that Vancouver had to offer, the football fans who came in for the games just came in, watched a game and left. That means there was less money being spent in other areas and less support for local businesses.
Another interesting factor is that the geography in which the 2026 World Cup is being played also affects tourism. This World Cup has been stretched over three different countries and multiple cities. Travellers are usually flying directly to the cities where they will watch their soccer teams play, and then travelling to the next city where they will watch their team play. Therefore, there was little time to explore other attractions that are nearby.
Many people in the tourism industry believe the travel pattern has changed the way people have spent money while traveling. Instead of going away for a week to one destination you have many of the people who support the games planning a short and very specific itinerary which was mostly focused around attending the different football games.
Another challenge faced with the early data from bookings was that the hotel occupancy rates in Vancouver were down from the year before, despite Vancouver being home to one of the largest sporting events that occurs in the world. In Toronto only had slight increases in some areas of accommodation, but still did not meet everyone’s expectations.
Tourism leaders identified pricing to have played a role, as a number of large hotel chains booked significant room blocks years before the event began in anticipation of filling the hotels, with the hope of charging a premium rate for the rooms, only to find that the demand never reached the expectation.
Leading up to the tournament, many hotels began to lower their rates in an effort to attract customers, however by this time many travelers had already altered their initial plans or booked accommodations at other locations.
Finally, when comparing the results between Vancouver and the other cities that hosted the tournament, the differences were very pronounced.
In the last few months, there has been a drastic increase in the amount of visitors to many cities including Miami, Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey; however, Vancouver and Seattle have struggled to keep pace. Although there had been months of great expectations for Toronto as a host city, it ended up performing poorly when compared against the other cities identified above.
What is most interesting is the drastic change in the expectations of officials from when the initial projections were made. For example, city representatives had been optimistic about receiving visitors and welcomed them in record numbers comparable with dozens of Super Bowls; businesses and hotels were planning for nonstop business; hotels would be adding staff, tourism companies would be modifying their schedules, and retailers would have stocked inventory anticipating large numbers of customers coming into their stores.
The quiet streets have taken everyone by surprise.
The Canadian tourism sector is engaged in ongoing discussions about how to improve the overall experience for tourists visiting Canada.
Global sporting events are not necessarily guaranteed to bring economic prosperity to all of the participating locations. Factors such as price structure, visitor patterns and behaviours, travel logistics and geographical location will determine how much of an economic benefit local businesses derive from global sporting events.
Vancouver is already facing challenges as a result of this lesson.
While football has provided a focus for the world’s attention, the lack of substantial economic benefit to many smaller businesses is an unfortunate outcome of the tournament. Many smaller businesses have been waiting to be able to return to their previous levels of business when traditional tourism resumes following the end of the tournament.
