NYC hotels see sudden surge in bookings for the World Cup sending occupancy soaring over 90%

Ka-ching! The 2026 FIFA World Cup is not the embarrassment many predicted it would be for New York City. Even the city’s top bean counter, Mark Levine, took to X to rain on the soccer parade over the weekend:“Hotel bookings are *lower* here than this time last year.Bookings into JFK are down from last year,” he wrote.

“FIFA had projected 1.2M visitors to NY/NJ.We will be lucky to hit 1/3 of that.

Huge disappointment.”But a rush of last-minute bookings drove New York hotel occupancy to over 90%, “the highest level of any host city,” according to the City Reporter Thursday, citing data from commercial real estate analytics firm CoStar.Now that the Knicks’ thrilling playoff run is in the rearview mirror, the city’s tourist machine is pivoting full-throttle to soccer fever.“Guests booked almost a quarter of the rooms the week of the match, held Saturday, June 13,” the City Reporter wrote.“Average daily room rates also jumped 38% over last year, giving credence to the statements of tourism officials that a last-minute surge could turn the event from what appeared to be an economic bust into a boom.”For the June 13 opening match between Brazil and Morocco at MetLife Stadium (officially known as the New York New Jersey Stadium), the game-date hotel occupancy rate in New York City was 88.6% with an average daily room rate of $406.01, CoStar data provided to The Post indicates.

Occupancy ticked up to 90.5% and a $458.64 average daily room rate for the June 16 match in the East Rutherford, N.J., stadium between France and Senegal.The World Cup is expected to pump a staggering $45 billion into the global gross domestic product, with the US scoring $19 billion of it, Bank of America analysts recently forecast.The North American soccer spectacle is also set to trigger a $32 billion US consumer spending spree, per analysts.As The Post previously reported, the World Cup’s economic footprint could absolutely blow the numbers generated by Taylor Swif...