U.S. businesses spent months jacking up prices for the World Cup. They prepared inventory. They hired staff. They printed menus in languages they can't speak.
The tourists haven't shown up.
This wasn't supposed to happen. The World Cup was going to be a goldmine. Every hotel from Miami to Seattle was going to print money. Airlines were going to charge four figures for domestic flights. Restaurants were going to serve twelve-dollar beers to Argentinians who just wanted to watch Messi kick a ball.
Instead we get "city-by-city, match-by-match test of pricing power." That's corporate speak for "we might have f*cked this up."
The problem is simple. Businesses looked at Qatar 2022 and thought Americans would behave like oil sheikhs on vacation. They forgot Americans are cheap. They forgot international tourists compare prices on seventeen websites before booking anything. They forgot soccer fans are just regular people who need to eat and sleep, not walking ATMs desperate to burn cash in whatever city hosts a Round of 16 match.
So now we wait. Maybe Philadelphia gets lucky when Mexico plays. Maybe Los Angeles fills hotels when Brazil shows up. Maybe absolutely nothing happens and every Marriott in America eats shit on their dynamic pricing algorithm.
The beautiful part is watching hotel chains pretend this is strategic patience. They're not panicking. They're just being flexible. They're responding to market conditions. They definitely didn't hire consultants who promised them a travel boom that would rival the Super Bowl times thirty.
Those consultants are now explaining that the real profits come in the knockout rounds, just you wait, this is all part of the plan.
The tourists will come eventually, probably right after U.S. businesses drop their prices back to normal and admit soccer isn't the NFL.
Photo by Chris Leipelt on Unsplash
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