Sports media and naysayers have spent the better part of the spring predicting that this summer's FIFA World Cup across North America will be a logistical catastrophe, a tourism dud, or both.
Marriott International didn't get the memo.
The narrative and data points to underwhelming hotel bookings in some of the host cities for World Cup matches in the U.S. The American Hotel & Lodging Association polled hoteliers across the host cities, and the findings released in a report this week showed 80% of respondents say bookings are below initial forecasts, roughly half had released room blocks following “FIFA room block overcommitment,” and most chalked that up to visa barriers and broader geopolitical concerns.
On Marriott’s first quarter earnings call this week, executives pushed back on the mounting skepticism surrounding hospitality's big summer bet.
“Despite what you're hearing and reading in the press, we continue to feel confident in our 30 to 35 basis point impact globally from World Cup,” Jennifer Mason — in her earnings call debut as the company’s new chief financial officer following Leeny Oberg’s retirement — told analysts, noting that total revenue is pacing up nicely over match dates and in line with expectations.
As for some of those much-scrutinized FIFA room block cancellations? Those were fully anticipated and already baked into the forecast, Mason said. The company also did its homework: Marriott benchmarked the event against other large citywide events. With the exact matchups for the latter half of the competition still to be determined — and the predictable frenzy of last-minute bookings that comes with any major sporting event — there's still plenty of room for the upside to materialize.
And in case you needed reminding that the U.S. remains more of a football than soccer kind of market: Mason noted that World Cup group occupancy is likely to be in the 15% range compared to the 40% typically seen for the Super Bowl.
The Middle East, where conflict with Iran continues after first starting in late February, is a considerably more complicated story.
Marriott's exposure to the region is meaningful — the region accounts for 3% of open rooms across the company’s global network and 7% of rooms in the company’s development pipeline — and the first quarter results made the impact clear. Hotel performance, or RevPAR, in the Middle East fell more than 30% in March alone, a figure that darkened what was otherwise an impressive quarter for the company globally.
Despite the Middle East impact, Marriott’s global RevPAR was up 4.2%, and company leaders also noted growth beyond luxury, echoing green shoots Hilton CEO Chris Nassetta noted last week regarding the K-shaped economy beginning to dissipate into something benefitting more price points than the highest end.
While luxury performance at Marriott was up nearly 7% in the U.S. and Canada, select service (brands like Fairfield and Residence Inn) — which had been down more than 1% in the last three months of 2025 — bounced back to 3.5% growth in the first quarter of this year. Leisure and group both posted solid gains, and even business travel clocked 2% RevPAR growth in the U.S. and Canada. The company raised its full-year global RevPAR guidance to 2 to 3% growth. Marriott reported a $648 million profit for the quarter.
But back to the Middle East: The second quarter is expected to be even more painful, with Marriott projecting roughly a 50% RevPAR decline before conditions stabilize through the back half of the year. But there are tentative green shoots in the region.
“We have certainly seen booking activity showing some signs of recovery from the lows that we experienced in March,” Mason said. “But we do expect that the impact to the Middle East properties will continue through the end of the year.”
What makes the calculus more complicated is the ripple effect beyond the region itself.
“The reality is the Middle East accounts for 10% of global transit traffic demand,” Marriott CEO Anthony Capuano said. “And so that ripple effect, particularly for a company like Marriott that has such a dominant footprint in markets like India, is something we've got to watch closely.”
Disruptions to carriers like Emirates and Etihad have downstream consequences across APAC, with India and the Maldives already feeling the softness. The APAC team anticipates the most significant impact in the current quarter, with some relief expected as other carriers absorb lost capacity.
Company leaders acknowledged that booking windows for transient travel remain short — plus or minus three weeks — which makes forward visibility murky at best. The company's guidance reflects a “fluid” and “uncertain situation,” and any faster-than-expected recovery in the Middle East would represent meaningful upside to the numbers on the board.
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