Latest / Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights / World Cup 2026 Hosts Missing Out on Thousands (Here's Why)

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World Cup 2026 Hosts Missing Out on Thousands (Here's Why) · Host Planet: Airbnb, Holiday Let, and Vacation Rental Insights

0:00
You're going to see people booking short stays around match
0:02
dates. You need to make sure you're
0:04
paying attention to what's happening right now.
0:06
Out of the bookings that have come in, about 31% of those are
0:10
one to two nights. A lot of hosts think the World
0:13
Cup means they can charge thousands of dollars a night,
0:16
but the data says otherwise. In this episode, Kyle Driscoll
0:20
from Price Labs explains how hosts should actually price
0:24
their rentals during the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
0:27
This is the Host Planet podcast powered by house funny Kyle,
0:36
thank you for joining us on the House planet podcast.
0:39
The FIFA World Cup is coming 104 matches, 48 teams, 16 host
0:45
cities across the US, Canada and Mexico.
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It all kicks off in Mexico City on June the 11th with the final
0:52
taking place in New Jersey on July 19th.
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It will be the biggest World Cup ever, but let's be honest, there
1:00
are hosts out there who think the World Cup means they can
1:04
charge thousands of dollars a night for their spare room.
1:07
What's the brutal reality of World Cup pricing for most
1:11
hosts? I really appreciate you having
1:14
me on, James. I'm looking forward to this
1:15
conversation. I'm going to say the the one
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thing that hosts need to realize is there will be people that can
1:22
get that $1000. There will be a certain segment
1:26
of Airbnb's of short term rentals that can get that kind
1:29
of money. But for a majority of us, that's
1:31
not reality. It's really going to be like 1%
1:35
of properties that are able to perform that way.
1:37
Yeah. So don't just expect that it's
1:40
going to be thousands and thousands.
1:41
You just put your property on Airbnb and away you go.
1:44
You know, your bank balance just gets, gets, goes, goes crazy.
1:47
It's not going to be quite like that.
1:49
If we're looking at the current data, then Kyle, which World Cup
1:53
host cities are going to massively outperform
1:57
expectations in terms of short term rentals and which ones do
2:00
you think are going to be overestimated?
2:04
Oh, I love this question. The the number one, one that we
2:07
see right now that is performing really well, that is going to be
2:10
outperforming expectations is Atlanta.
2:13
Atlanta is think of it kind of like a hub location because of
2:19
flights and things like that. Right now it's the one that is
2:22
pacing really, really ahead of where we kind of expected it.
2:26
The other one is Kansas City, KS City has a very unique set up
2:32
right now and that it doesn't have a ton of hotels, It doesn't
2:35
have the accommodations for as many people are going to come
2:38
in. So Kansas City has a lot of rate
2:40
power. Vancouver has a lot of rate
2:42
power as well, right? The rates are currently really
2:45
high, but what we expect is that we'll be able to achieve those
2:49
rates in Vancouver. Now on the disappointing side,
2:53
unfortunately, it's going to be some of the bigger cities in the
2:56
US right now. I think New York and New Jersey
3:02
is probably one of the bigger ones that kind of feels like a
3:04
trap. The reason it kind of feels like
3:07
a trap to me is 1 STR regulations are very, very heavy
3:11
there. So you're going to have to stay
3:12
outside of the city, but also how many hotels there are.
3:15
So if you're in the New York, New Jersey area, unless you're
3:19
one of those top tier properties, be on the lookout.
3:22
It's going to be very competitive for you.
3:24
But ultimately still think you've got the ability to to
3:27
generate what you want there. Our California locations, Los
3:31
Angeles, San Francisco, unfortunately, I just don't
3:36
think we're going to be able to meet those expectations.
3:38
Now once we get into the quarterfinals, the round of 32,
3:41
the semi finals and all of that stuff, maybe we're able to
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really drive right there. But like, as we were talking
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about right before we hopped on here, Los Angeles is actually
3:51
pacing behind last year. Like take the World Cup out.
3:54
Los Angeles is underperforming right now.
3:57
There's a lot of reasons for that.
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One of them being people are trying to charge really, really
4:01
high rates. They've got really long minimum
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links of stay compared to what people want to stay.
4:07
And then ultimately the match ups are more geared toward the
4:12
domestic travelers. the US is in California a lot right now.
4:16
Iran is over there. Think we know that's probably
4:19
going to change here pretty soon.
4:20
They're going to end up in Mexico most likely.
4:22
And then the other California location, San Francisco kind of
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feels the same way now. One of the things I think that
4:30
we're seeing over on that West Coast is the match ups and those
4:34
match ups that are getting people that are booking early
4:37
that are driving a lot of demand.
4:39
They're happening on the East Coast of the US, They're
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happening down in Guadalajara, Monterey, even happening up a
4:45
little bit in Vancouver and Toronto, San Francisco, Los
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Angeles, unfortunately kind of get the short end of the stick,
4:50
even though they have the US come again, the US is going to
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drive a ton, but those bookings are going to come towards the
4:55
end. And then Seattle, Seattle's
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probably the one that I think is going to underperform the most
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just because it's going to be very, very dependent on how
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close you are to the to the actual stadium.
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And then as well, like parking's a huge issue there.
5:14
So people are going to have to stay well away from that
5:17
stadium. You're not going to have the
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ability to drive rates if people are not able to walk to the
5:22
stadium, so to speak. We've seen in past World Cups
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and we've done some episodes recently about this, looking at
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Russia 2018, which is a little bit more comparable to the US
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because it's bigger geographic area.
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Obviously, we had Qatar 2022, but that basically one city and
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what we saw in Russia 2018 was that a lot of house and property
5:43
managers were putting their rates really high for the entire
5:48
tournament and in some cases were having these long minimum
5:53
stay parameters. Is this what's happening on the
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West Coast? Are the house and property
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managers, they're just pricing themselves out and with those
6:04
minimum stay parameters just not really being visible to to
6:08
people that are searching? Think that's probably one of the
6:11
biggest things that we're seeing right now is there's an
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expectation from a lot of from a lot of short term rental
6:19
operators that they're going to be able to get the entire World
6:22
Cup booked from day one to the final day.
6:26
That's not actually what's going to be happening.
6:28
There are some use cases where that may come to fruition
6:32
depending on where you're located, depending on your
6:33
property, depending on the teams that are coming around, that's
6:36
possible. But really what's going to end
6:38
up happening with the World Cup, you're going to see people
6:41
booking short stays around match dates and then traveling between
6:45
locations. So to really optimize, you need
6:49
to make sure you're paying attention to what's happening
6:51
right now. Now out of the bookings that
6:54
have come in that we know are verified FIFA bookings, about
6:58
31% of those are one to two nights.
7:01
Now when you have your minimum length of stay at one to two
7:03
nights, we're able to charge those kind of and call them
7:06
crazy high rates. We're able to achieve those.
7:09
But when you start coupling in three, 4-5 days, it's so much
7:13
harder to get that. Obviously, it's going to bring
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your ADR down. But if you are currently going
7:18
for let's say 5 to 7 nights, go ahead and pivot.
7:23
Let's get it down to at least four.
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Really you should probably be at 3 for match days.
7:29
Go with high ADR, try to get you, you know, two or three
7:33
nights in there. And then the number one thing
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that I want to all to take away from this from a pricing
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standpoint, be nimble and be ready to pivot.
7:41
Pay attention to what's happening with the data.
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Listen to these types of podcasts and understand it's not
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always going to be, you're not always going to be able to get
7:48
that high rate. If you've got a great match,
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you're probably going to be able to achieve crazy AD Rs don't
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have a great match. You probably need to chase
7:57
occupancy a little bit more and try to try to bring those rates
7:59
down a little bit. I think we should probably
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explain just a little bit about the tournament.
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It really kind of is split into half.
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You've got the first half of the tournament, which is the group
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stage where all 48 teams are involved.
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Then you've got the knockout rounds.
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Now in the group stage. We know what those fixtures are
8:18
currently at the moment, there's at the time we're recording,
8:21
there's a few more qualifiers, so there's still a few more
8:23
teams to be decided, but we know the vast majority of those
8:26
matches. We know which countries are
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going to which cities. Now that presents a fantastic
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opportunity, especially if you're in a city which is
8:34
hosting Argentina or Colombia or Mexico or or the the United
8:41
States or Brazil. You know the the teams that are
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going to attract a large following not just of
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international fans, but fans based in the US as well.
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So how important is it to be really aware of the teams that
8:55
are playing in your location? And also to be aware that in the
8:58
knockout rounds, you're not going to know which teams are
9:02
going to be playing where until those matches have actually
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happened. Because 1/4 final might happen
9:08
and then the semi final might be a week later.
9:10
But you're not going to know which teams are playing in the
9:11
semi final until that quarter final is finished.
9:14
Yeah, so for your audience that doesn't know who I am, I'm a
9:18
complete geek when it comes to data, but really was sports too.
9:22
So this kind of like goes right into what I love.
9:25
The matches are the most important aspect of you being
9:28
able to generate maximum revenue.
9:31
Let's take Kansas City as an example.
9:33
They open up with Argentina defending the World Cup
9:36
championship. That's going to be massive.
9:39
You're going to be able to get huge rates.
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Obviously we don't need to have really long lengths of stay, but
9:44
that and if if we're doing a visual, let's say that's going
9:47
to be up in the top 90% of the the ability to generate revenue,
9:52
then we switch over. The next match up I believe is
9:54
Curacao, which is one of the smallest nations that's coming
9:57
in. The great power is not there the
10:00
same. You don't have that same pool of
10:01
people that are wanting to come to Kansas City to experience
10:04
this event. And then just about three to
10:07
five days later you have the Netherlands starting with their
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second match. They're going to drive a bunch.
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So just thinking about Kansas City, you've got high AD, Rs,
10:15
moderate ADR, getting back up to a higher ADR.
10:18
So those matchups are massively, massively going to influence
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what you can charge. One other aspect of it is where
10:26
are these teams staying? Like where are the the team's
10:29
base camp set up? England, Argentina, They're out
10:33
in the Kansas City area, even though England's going to have a
10:36
majority of their matchups in Boston.
10:38
It's a really interesting setup, but knowing where these people
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are or where these teams are set up, how much demand comes with
10:45
those teams will really help you set your strategy up for
10:49
success. One quick one to talk about that
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not a lot of people kind of realize is Scotland.
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Scotland has such great booking patterns behind it right now.
10:58
They're they're coming in droves and it's going to be really,
11:01
really fun to see how Scotland performs.
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And if you are in one of these cities where a team like
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Scotland, a team that maybe they haven't come over to the States
11:11
in a long time, maybe they haven't been a part of the World
11:13
Cup, or maybe they're, you know, like Italy and they're going to
11:17
fight in and get in at the very end, maybe potentially you're
11:20
going to get a lot of demand from that.
11:22
So it's really important to understand the match ups in the
11:25
group stage. You're going to have some
11:28
throwaway games, so to speak, because this is the biggest
11:31
tournament. They expanded it this year to
11:33
include more, more teams in it. So you're going to have a few of
11:36
those games and once you get out of the group stage and you start
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looking at the round of 32, the quarterfinals, the semi finals,
11:44
there's a ton of possibility there.
11:47
But again, that goes to being nimble kind of understand who
11:50
could potentially end up playing.
11:52
Like just as a quick example, if you know Portugal is in Group K,
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good chance Portugal's going to win Group K or they're going to
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finish in second spot. You can kind of look and see if
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there's potential for them to to come to your location.
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Those teams are going to drive drive your your ability to drive
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rates up. Yeah, 100% yeah.
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With Scotland, no surprise. It's the first time they've
12:14
qualified for a World Cup since 1998, and their fans travel in
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massive numbers. I remember watching a
12:23
documentary about when Scotland qualified for the 1978 World Cup
12:27
in Argentina and there were stories of people selling their
12:31
businesses, selling everything they owned just so they could
12:34
get to Argentina by any means possible possible.
12:37
It was, it was absolutely remarkable.
12:40
And Scotland was sure they were going to win the World Cup that
12:42
year. And well, of course they didn't.
12:44
They, they only lasted. They didn't get out of the group
12:46
as usual, but maybe they'll get out of the group this time.
12:48
Let's, let's try and be be kind to our our Scottish cousins
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north of the border. Absolutely one thing.
12:55
On top of that, sorry for sorry for stepping over you, James.
12:58
Just kind of thinking about Scotland in particular,
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understanding who the guest is that's going to be coming to you
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is going to be so, so key. You just gave such great
13:08
background about Scotland. There's going to be generations
13:11
of families that are like, we haven't seen this together.
13:14
Let's go visit together as a Airbnb operator, as a short term
13:19
rental operator, if you're in hotels and you're listening to
13:22
this, treat those people like they're special.
13:25
If it's if they're coming over here, you have so much that you
13:28
can do to make those experiences great.
13:30
And then by setting the properties up to really welcome
13:34
these guests, that helps you charge ADR, that helps you
13:36
increase those rates, get things prepped up, merchandise yourself
13:40
for who your clients are going to be.
13:42
And then then we'll start charging that that high revenue.
13:45
Yeah, 100%. I mean, I think, remember we
13:48
talk about this in an e-book that host Planet and Price Labs
13:51
have collaborated on, which is available now.
13:54
There's a link to it in the show notes.
13:56
And in fact, if you're watching on YouTube, scan the QR code.
13:59
We'll make sure that that's on screen for a while so that you
14:02
can grab it and and in there there's a lot of tips about how
14:07
you can set yourself up for success really in terms of the
14:10
fans, you know, think about things like having the match
14:12
schedule, having the wall chart there.
14:15
Think about recommending the best sports bars where people
14:18
can go, even if it's like face paints and flags.
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The more you know about your guests as as we share all the
14:24
time, the better that you can make.
14:26
There you go. There's the England flag.
14:28
You know, the the better you can, you can provide a brilliant
14:31
experience for your guests. If you've got Scotland fans come
14:35
in, you know, if it if it's a group of guys, they're probably
14:37
going to want a pack of beers. That's an upselling opportunity.
14:40
So you know, all all these things, these these little
14:42
things will will really go a long way.
14:46
Let's have another thing then about where we can help people
14:51
get their rates right in relation to the World Cup.
14:55
What do you think is the single biggest pricing mistake that
14:59
hosts are making at the moment that you can see in the data?
15:04
Easily going for longer stays like international right now
15:10
what has been booked up inside of the US in particular Canada
15:14
and Mexico are very similar as well.
15:16
It's going to be that international travel really
15:20
hitting us in in the US, those international folks or who have
15:23
booked. If we are expecting these folks
15:27
that are going to come over here and they're they're going to
15:29
stay for two to three weeks, if not the entire tournament time.
15:33
But we can't expect them to come to these these awesome countries
15:38
and stay in one city. You know, if somebody comes in
15:41
and they're staying in Miami, they're going to go hit up
15:44
Orlando in between matches. They're going to want to go.
15:48
If there's, if they've got a match up in Houston, they're
15:50
going to want to go to New Orleans and see what New Orleans
15:54
is all about. If they're in Dallas, they might
15:56
want to get down and go to the Gulf, the Gulf of Mexico.
16:00
There's all types of stuff like that.
16:02
People in Kansas City, they're going to want to get to to
16:04
Chicago and Milwaukee and visit the Great Lakes.
16:07
There's all those other things that are going to come in there.
16:09
So the number one thing I think that people are making a mistake
16:13
on is trying to force people to stay too long.
16:16
And in turn you're, you're killing your visibility because
16:18
if people are coming and saying I don't care what I pay, but I'm
16:22
only going to stay for two nights, guess what?
16:24
If you're at five nights, they don't even know you exist.
16:28
Yeah, it's it is a really good point.
16:30
I mean, in terms of what your minimum stay should be, where do
16:35
you think people should be landing?
16:37
Because as we've kind of mentioned, demand is going to
16:41
cluster around those match days. So how should people be thinking
16:46
of it? It should it be a one night
16:48
minimum? Should it be a two night
16:49
minimum? What do you think people should
16:51
be offering? Because I, I think a mistake
16:52
that we've seen in the past is that House are expecting every
16:55
night during the World Cup to be a crazy rate and, and that's
16:58
just not reality. Yeah.
17:00
So it's it's very match dependent and it's also date
17:06
dependent as well. So as an example with Kansas
17:09
City, the second matchup and the third matchup, they happen two
17:14
days after each other. So if you price correctly and
17:18
you're targeting the guest segment of hey, I'm just a a
17:21
super football fan, I want to watch great football.
17:24
I don't really care who the teams are.
17:25
You're going to be able to get people that stay 3-4 nights for
17:29
those type of matchups. If you've got 5 or 6 days
17:32
between a match, you need to be probably at two or three nights
17:36
and then ready to pivot. Now, I'm not going to tell
17:39
anybody that you shouldn't be at a one night minimum length of
17:41
stay, but if you're at a one night minimum length of stay,
17:44
you should be shooting for the stars to start off.
17:47
But again, be nimble, maneuver very quickly.
17:50
You can always bring your rate back down.
17:53
You can't increase it after getting it sold.
17:56
So if you make that pivot on your minimum length of stay,
18:00
make sure your rates match kind of what's in the market.
18:03
If you are going to stick to a longer length of stay, you're
18:06
going to have to bring that that average price down.
18:10
But again, the match days, you're going to be able to
18:13
charge a lot more than what you're going to be able to
18:16
charge on those off days in between the matchups.
18:18
Don't think of those days in between matchups as anything
18:22
more than just peak summer season.
18:25
Yes, you would be able to get pretty good rates.
18:27
It's not going to be. You're not going to have to go
18:29
down to your bare minimum on those dates.
18:31
Be realistic on those non match dates.
18:34
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19:09
All right, back to it, Kyle. A lot of people assume the World
19:14
Cup is kind of completely driven by international travel, but how
19:19
much of the demand is actually going to come from domestic fans
19:23
travelling within the US, Canada and Mexico?
19:27
You're going to see a lot of it, especially with the way the
19:31
schedules are kind of falling right now.
19:34
Mexico is going to play their matchups in Mexico, Canada's
19:37
going to play their matchups in Canada.
19:38
Once we get out of the groups, it's going to change a little
19:41
bit. And, you know, you may end up
19:42
with Canada playing in New York, made-up of Mexico playing in Los
19:45
Angeles, but for the most part, they're going to stay within
19:48
their host nation thinking about how the United States is built
19:54
out. We're we're a melting pot.
19:55
There's so many different nationalities that live here.
19:58
There's so many different people from all types of backgrounds
20:01
that plays into this too. But generally speaking, if I had
20:05
to put a number on it, I would say you would be looking at
20:07
about a 30% international, 70% domestic kind of playing field.
20:13
Certain matchups are going to be a little bit more, you know,
20:16
geared towards that. To talk a lot about Kansas City,
20:19
you're going to have a lot of US people visiting Kansas City.
20:23
You're also going to have the people following the
20:25
Netherlands, you're going to have people following Argentina,
20:28
all of that. But those types of markets are
20:30
going to have a lot of domestic travel.
20:32
New York, New Jersey, Toronto, they're going to have a lot more
20:37
international travel comparatively speaking.
20:40
What we're seeing with what is coming in right now in New York,
20:43
New Jersey, there is a lot of international bookings and that
20:48
we think that that's probably going to continue going as well.
20:51
Is it more likely that the domestic travel, I'm thinking if
20:54
you're a family maybe and you've got 2nd, 3rd, 4th generation,
20:58
maybe you know, you're from Colombia, but you've lived in
21:02
Miami, let's say for decades and you want to go see, you know,
21:06
your team wherever, wherever they're playing.
21:08
Are they more likely to maybe book for longer and have these
21:11
big family trips to go and to go and watch their their team?
21:15
Yeah, I, I think the domestic travellers are going to be the
21:19
ones that you really have to watch out for on the these short
21:22
stays. Now you do have a better
21:26
opportunity in my opinion to get four and five nights.
21:29
You're not going to really convert 7, two week types of
21:32
stays. There's going to be some caveats
21:35
with that as well. You know, England's for, I
21:38
believe England's first two matchups are going to be in
21:40
Boston. I have a lot of English people
21:42
that live in the US that want to go and just hang out there and
21:44
they're going to be there for five or six days. the US has its
21:47
first couple of matchups in Los Angeles.
21:50
A lot of people are going to want to go and stay kind of in
21:52
that area. But outside of that, I don't
21:54
think you're going to see too many long stays.
21:57
Your best bet to get bookings that are more than five nights
22:01
are going to be if you were in one of those host regions where
22:05
a team is setting up their base camp.
22:08
Again, using Kansas City as my example, just kind of the the
22:10
baby of the World Cup for me, England, Netherlands, Argentina,
22:15
you've got a good chance to get some of those people set up
22:17
there. But again, keep in mind people
22:18
want to see what what the US has to offer and we're very, very
22:22
spread out with this World Cup, especially compared to the last
22:26
one. Absolutely.
22:27
I mean, I, I worked on the last World Cup in, in Qatar, the
22:30
longest distance between stadiums if you wanted to drive
22:33
was about an hour. And in this World Cup, the
22:37
longest distance between stadiums is quite a long plane
22:40
ride. I think probably 6 or 7 hours to
22:42
get from Canada down to to Mexico.
22:45
So the scale of this World Cup is is much, much, much bigger.
22:50
Absolutely. So I mean, I think another thing
22:53
that we need to mention is that and we, we earlier we talked
22:57
about the World Cup being split into two halves.
22:59
We've got the group stage where we know where people are going
23:02
to be based and where they're going to be playing.
23:04
And then the knockout rounds where you can kind of plan a
23:07
little bit and think, oh, well, you know, my team might be
23:10
playing in LA for 1/4 final or they might be in New York for
23:15
the semi final or something like that.
23:18
Are we seeing fans booking properties who are maybe hosting
23:22
quarter finals, semi finals and final with flexible cancellation
23:26
policies and they basically wait to see where their team might
23:30
play in the knockout rounds? Are we seeing that happening and
23:33
if we are, how should hosts protect themselves from this
23:37
kind of behaviour? Absolutely.
23:40
And we, we talked about this kind of on our our prep call a
23:43
few days ago as well. And about 60 to 65% of the
23:48
bookings that have happened that we know where for the World Cup
23:51
have been booked on a flexible cancellation policy.
23:54
People are wanting to go ahead and, you know, get themselves
23:57
tied up to what could potentially happen, but that is
24:00
exactly what's happening. So people, if you have bookings
24:03
right now and you're on flexible, be aware there will be
24:06
a heavy dosage of cancellations. A lot of people don't even know
24:10
if they have tickets yet. I'm I want to go to plenty of
24:14
World Cup matchups, want to go to Atlanta, I want to get out to
24:16
Kansas City, But right now I don't even know if I have access
24:20
to those tickets. There's going to be a whole
24:22
nother cycle of ticket releases. There's a bunch of other little
24:26
steps that are going to happen. But right now people are looking
24:28
and saying, OK, just like I was saying, plotting where teams are
24:32
going to be going. If you're a Portuguese fan,
24:34
you're going to be looking at saying, OK, we're starting here,
24:36
we're starting here. I might have to go to Kansas
24:38
City if they don't perform as well, I'm going to have to end
24:41
up in Boston. If they perform really well and
24:44
I make it to the finals, I'm going to need to be in New York.
24:47
So people are going through and checking and saying, hey, this
24:51
property is already available, let me book it, cancel it
24:54
whenever I need to. So that is something to think
24:56
about. Airbnb, in particular
24:59
booking.com, everybody's going to say they want you to be as
25:02
flexible as possible. Ultimately, that's because it's
25:06
the best thing for Airbnb and their customers and saving face
25:09
and everything like that. As a property manager, I would
25:13
suggest being a little more restrictive with your
25:17
cancellation policy. Not going to tell you to be as
25:20
strict as you possibly can be, but make sure that you have
25:23
that. You're not going fully flexible
25:25
right now. As you get closer to the dates,
25:28
if you're still not booked up, go ahead and switch that over to
25:31
a flexible cancellation policy. But right now protect your
25:34
asset, especially if you're one of those that's in the upper
25:39
tier of properties. If you've got a property that's
25:41
just, you know, like maybe you're just setting up a new
25:43
bedroom or you're, you're going to move out of your house for a
25:46
little bit and let somebody take it over for a month.
25:48
Maybe you don't have to worry too much about this stuff.
25:51
But if you have a property that that is going to warrant really
25:55
high rates, you're going to get full occupancy in there, be
25:59
protective of what you've got, get away from being fully
26:02
flexible and put a little bit of strictness in there.
26:04
Yeah, there'll be plenty of fans out there who are being pretty
26:07
smart with this and they'll be finding properties that are
26:10
flexible because, you know, often actually with with
26:13
tickets. And it's worth mentioning
26:15
sometimes with FIFA they do rounds where you apply to get a
26:19
quarterfinal ticket or a semi final ticket or there's kind of
26:21
like a draw. So you might get given all
26:23
right, here are your quarterfinal tickets.
26:25
And obviously you don't know which teams are going to be
26:27
playing. You just hope that it's a team
26:29
that you that you want to see. And I think another point to
26:31
make with fans, and I, I saw this a lot in Doha in, in Qatar,
26:36
a lot of Argentina fans travelled without tickets to go
26:40
to games. They would try and buy a ticket
26:43
or tell the ticket as they were getting in.
26:45
And a lot of people travel for the experience as well.
26:48
They want to go to the fan parks, they'll go to the bars.
26:51
They just want to be part of the atmosphere.
26:53
You know, especially in the group stage, it is one giant big
26:57
party which which people want to be a part of.
27:00
So, so think about that as well. There will be people travelling
27:03
to your city who don't have tickets but they just want to be
27:05
there because their team, their team is playing.
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28:27
So a lot of hosts then assume their competition might stay the
28:32
same or be the same as it was last year.
28:36
But I think as we know, big events often bring a wave of new
28:40
supply onto the market. Are we seeing a lot of new
28:44
supply? And how's that going to?
28:47
Let's use a football analogy, like switch the goal posts a bit
28:50
during this tournament. Yeah.
28:52
So it's it's kind of funny, we're seeing both sides of that
28:55
coin. You're seeing a lot of new
28:57
inventory come into the market. You're also seeing some people
29:01
pull their inventory from the market because they just don't
29:04
know what they're doing with their strategy yet.
29:06
So taking it off, they're probably going to reset.
29:09
April may come out with a new strategy.
29:12
A lot of people may be pulling it off thinking, OK, well I'll
29:15
let everything else sell. I'll be the last one left and
29:18
then I can charge $5000. So you do have kind of both
29:22
sides of that coin in my opinion.
29:24
So in terms of extra supply, have we got a lot more extra
29:28
supply? Are you seeing that in the data
29:29
in all the host cities? Yes, thank you for thank you for
29:33
bringing me back to that. Certain cities for sure, like as
29:36
an example, Kansas City, they don't have the supply.
29:39
Vancouver's got a lot of restrictions and things like
29:41
that. So you don't see a ton there.
29:43
Place like Kansas City, you have a lot of supply growth there.
29:47
Vancouver, New York, Los Angeles, there's not a ton of
29:51
supply growth there. Everywhere else you do see a
29:54
little bit of it, but those markets that that are suffering
29:58
and don't have enough hotels, that's where you see this, this
30:01
really being impactful. The one thing that I will say
30:04
and this is a little bit of conjecture, I don't it's not
30:07
necessarily a data back thing. What is coming into the market
30:11
is not that top tier quality stuff.
30:14
So not those destination Airbnb type properties, not those, you
30:19
know, places that people on BDC are looking for and just going
30:22
to want to, you know, go crazy over.
30:24
You're seeing a lot of supply entering.
30:26
That is like I said, you know, somebody selling an extra bed,
30:30
somebody saying hey, our house is our family home, but we're
30:33
going to move out for a little bit.
30:35
You're seeing a lot of that enter the market.
30:38
Yeah, people basically taking a chance, thinking right, the
30:40
World Cup's coming to town, I can maybe make some some money.
30:45
If you had to give one piece of advice to a host who thinks the
30:48
World Cup is going to pay their mortgage for the year, what
30:52
would it be? Reset your thinking and the I
30:58
really want to convey being nimble is the most important
31:01
thing. You don't have to be a data nerd
31:03
like me, but there are a lot of tools out there that can help
31:06
you out with identifying the stuff, not just price labs.
31:09
There's a lot of dynamic pricing tools.
31:11
You can use AI to ask questions about things like what's
31:15
happening with schedule, you know, have there been any
31:18
injuries to the team? You can use a lot of tools
31:21
around you to, to gather information to help you with
31:24
your strategy. So I think B nimble is the
31:28
number one piece of advice I can give you.
31:30
Go for the stars. Like if you've if you've got a
31:32
property in the World Cups coming to you and you are
31:35
walking distance and you've got a couple of decent amenities,
31:39
shoot for the stars. Just don't restrict yourself
31:42
with that minimum stay and then shoot for the stars and it
31:45
fails. Be nimble and be ready to move.
31:48
And that being nimble isn't just coming down either, it's going
31:51
up if there's an opportunity. So.
31:54
And make sure you check out our ebook the the QR code is back on
31:59
screen now. So this is called inside the
32:01
2026 FIFA World Cup demand pricing and host strategy.
32:06
So this is a comprehensive guide for short term rental hosts
32:09
across the US, Canada and Mexico.
32:12
And it really is comprehensive. There's a lot of key takeaways
32:15
in there about the tournament, the mega event structure as a
32:20
revenue driver, context over hype.
32:23
We've got hosting opportunity, the travel patterns and property
32:27
positioning that you need to be aware of what your strategy
32:32
should be, whether it's the group stage or the knockout
32:35
rounds a little bit later on, the match schedules, pricing on
32:40
match days versus non match days, which which we were
32:42
talking about. This is not going to be a
32:44
blanket put your rates, whatever you want throughout the the
32:48
entire tournament. There's chatting there about the
32:51
strategic minimum stay strategy, loads and loads and loads of
32:56
data and and interesting insights there for hosts.
32:59
So if you are hosting in a World Cup host city, make sure you
33:02
check out this e-book. It's completely free from host
33:05
planet and price labs. And just before you go, Kyle,
33:09
just give us the Lowdown and Price Labs and what you guys do,
33:13
how you can help hosts and where people can go to find out more
33:15
information. Absolutely.
33:17
You can go to hello.pricelabs.co to find out about us.
33:20
We are a dynamic pricing, revenue management provider,
33:24
full suite of products. If you've got one property,
33:26
you've got 50 properties, you've got 5000 properties, we're going
33:31
to help you identify that best rate to charge, really optimize
33:35
your strategy. It's an AI powered tool.
33:37
We've been around for 11 years building out what I would like
33:41
to say is the best revenue management tool for short term
33:43
properties. Yeah, come check us out.
33:45
Hello at pricelaborhello.pricelabs.co.
33:48
One thing I want to say for your audience, James, I think the
33:52
amenity that people aren't talking about is parking.
33:57
There's so many of these markets where if you have plenty of
34:01
parking available or you're in walking distance, that's going
34:04
to be your biggest ADR driver. You can go in and you can put,
34:08
you know, big screens in your backyard and you can put a bar
34:11
and you can spend thousands of dollars on amenities.
34:14
If you have parking available and you are within distance of
34:18
the stadium, that is going to be a huge ability to drive your
34:22
revenue up. One other thing to keep in mind,
34:25
if you're far away from the stadium, those Uber costs, the
34:28
taxi cost, all of those extra costs, they're going to come out
34:32
of our pocket. It comes out of the ADR.
34:35
In my opinion. Everybody, especially in the
34:37
States, is going to be trying to capitalize.
34:39
Airlines are going to capitalize.
34:40
We're going to try to capitalize everybody as restaurants are,
34:44
but if you are far away from that stadium, those
34:47
transportation costs are probably going to end up coming
34:49
out of your ADR. So again, be nimble, be
34:51
realistic. Yeah, and put those details in
34:54
your listing or in your your house fully digital guidebook if
34:57
you've got 1. And I think as well in terms of
35:00
your listing, and this is mentioned in the e-book as well,
35:03
Price Labs has a tool called Listing Optimizer.
35:06
I think you can put your Airbnb link in there and it will tell
35:10
you what you need to do in relation to your titles, your
35:12
photos. And another tip as well, if
35:15
you're concerned about your content and maybe what FIFA
35:18
World Cup fans want to know about, you know, stick it into
35:22
ChatGPT or a large language model and ask them to create
35:25
content which is going to appeal to people who are travelling for
35:28
this tournament. That's going to help you stand
35:30
out among the competition. So yeah, a couple of nice tips
35:33
at the end, but most important thing, make sure you download
35:36
that new e-book from Host Planet and Price Labs.
35:39
Kyle, it's been a real pleasure discussing all things FIFA World
35:43
Cup with you. Thank you for joining us on the
35:45
Host Planet podcast. It's been a fantastic time.
35:48
Thank you so much and if you couldn't tell by my flag
35:50
earlier, I'm making a prediction on my World Cup winner.
35:53
I love that. 3 Lions all the way.
35:55
Love it. Now over to you.
35:57
If you're watching on YouTube, drop a comment and tell us.
36:00
Are you planning to change your pricing strategy for the 2026
36:04
World Cup? And if you're in one of the
36:06
house cities, do you think demand will meet expectations?
36:10
Let's start the conversation. If you found this episode
36:13
useful, hit like and subscribe wherever you're watching or
36:16
listening morning. New episodes of the House Planet
36:18
podcast drop every single week. And if there's a topic you'd
36:21
like us to cover or a guest you think we should speak to, leave
36:24
a comment or e-mail info at houseplanner dot club.
36:28
This is the House Planet podcast powered by housefully.
36:31
Until next time, happy hosting.