We’re less than two weeks away from the first FIFA Men’s World Cup match in Atlanta.
New numbers from the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau are showing hotels aren’t seeing the surge in bookings they expected from the more than 300,000 people expected to come to Atlanta for the matches.
“When the tickets were released, everybody expected to be sold out immediately. But that didn’t happen,” said Alfonce McKinney, the general manager of the Moxy Downtown Hotel.
McKinney says a room at this new downtown Atlanta hotel averages around $250 a night.
“During FIFA time, It’s in the high $300s and above,” McKinney said.
Down the street from Mercedes-Benz Stadium, between June 13 and June 30, the Omni Atlanta Hotel at Centennial Park is charging $549 and up per night.
Across from the stadium, Hotel Phoenix Atlanta has rates starting at $1,900 per night for the last match in mid-July.
McKinney says more hotel rooms are booked in June than in July.
“We’re above halfway percent. Basically above 50%. For the first two weeks of July, it’s going to be much lower. So they’re going to be lowered to 50%,” McKinney said.
William Pate, the Atlanta Convention and Visitor Bureau’s president, says it’s the same for hotels across Atlanta.
“We have a lot of hotel rooms booked in the first two weeks of the tournament because people know which countries are playing. So the followers of those countries are booking and plan to be here. We don’t know who’s going to be playing yet in the semifinal. So we have a slower booking pace there,” Pate said.
There is a drop in hotel bookings during FIFA compared to the same time last summer.
Pate says 226,000 hotel nights are booked during the World Cup.
Last summer, over the same period of time, he says more than 323,000 hotel nights were booked.
“Last summer, we had four Beyoncé concerts. We had the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in attendance. In addition to the conventions that we had in town,” Pate said.
The Convention and Visitors Bureau says fans have booked around 56,000 short-term rental nights.
“It’s been going extremely well. We are probably about 85% booked to capacity,” Tarshema Harris, an Atlanta Airbnb host, said.
The Convention and Visitors Bureau says some international travelers are also choosing short-term rentals over hotels.
