The World Cup’s Most Unexpected Winner: America

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The 2026 World Cup was supposed to be a story about soccer. Instead, it became a story about America.

In this episode of the Skift Travel Podcast, Sarah Kopit and Seth Borko discuss how international visitors are experiencing the United States during the World Cup and why social media has become filled with Europeans discovering Waffle House, Buc-ee’s, Walmart, college football culture, and small-town America.

The conversation begins with New York City’s championship celebration after the Knicks ended a 53-year title drought and explores how major sporting events can reshape destination perception. From Madison Square Garden and the World Cup to viral road trips across Texas and the American South, Sarah and Seth examine how sports create moments that change how travelers see places.

They also discuss what destination marketers can learn from the unexpected success of creators documenting authentic travel experiences, why international visitors seem surprised by American hospitality, and whether the World Cup could help reverse the recent decline in inbound travel to the United States.

Presented by ⁠⁠⁠⁠Viasat Ads⁠⁠⁠⁠. Click ⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more!

Watch This Episode

Knicks Drought Ends

The number of the week is 53. That is how many years it took for the New York Knicks to win a championship. And Seth and I are both, we are both New Yorkers, we are both here in the city.

And I mean, it’s been a week, but I think we can still talk about it. I think we can still like, rebel and languish.

Absolutely, absolutely. Especially because I am so glad to have you back, Sarah. Oh, I am so glad to be back.

It’s so good. I’ve been having to carry it and I’m so happy you’re back.

0:58

Vacation and Intro Banter

I will say, I was on vacation last week in Mexico, and I was at the pool scrolling through and I saw you in Galad.

I saw you, I saw your faces and I was a little jealous. I just flipped up and I’m like, no, I’m not going to watch them.

I’m not going to watch them having fun. Unless our producer Will is messing with me. What you didn’t see is that the 10 takes it took me to do a single.

Well, behind the scenes, Sarah is back from vacation and she just nailed the intro on her first take. That’s what a pro she is. So we can definitely celebrate the Knicks together, Sarah.

We haven’t had the chance to.

We have not had the chance. I will say, I have a picture. So I’ve been on the road, I was on vacation, my kids got out of school, so I had to kill a week with vacation.

For all you parents out there, the machine that is summer child care, got to kill one with vacation and fill it up with camp. Anyway, but I was also working.

We had a couple of events and on game four, I was flying home and it was a real, I don’t know what you want to call it.

1:58

Plane View and VPN Save

There’s so many mixed feelings because I thought, I don’t know, we thought they had lost on the Monday, so it wasn’t as big of a deal. Like maybe they weren’t going to win in four. But anyway, I was on the plane during the game.

They were down by 30, but we took one of those routes back into LaGuardia, where you fly right over Manhattan, which you don’t get to do it very often. It doesn’t happen all that often. I was on the right side of the plane sitting next to the window.

So I got one of those pictures of Madison Square Garden and the Empire State Building, all the buildings lit up in blue and orange.

So and then I will say, I don’t know, I hope nobody from Direct TV is watching, but I saved the day in Mexico for my family, really for my husband who is a diehard Knicks fan who grew up here in the city.

We thought that the sports bar down where we were in Mexico, we really thought that they would be showing the game, no matter what, but they weren’t.

So then we got back to the room and we had seen, and he had even checked beforehand that Amazon was going to be playing the game because internationally they have the rights, and they were, but it was in Spanish, and we don’t speak Spanish.

My husband’s a pretty chill guy. I’ve never seen him panic quite as much as he was on the phone.

I’m going to miss the winning game, the clinch in game.

Yeah, and so typing away at my computer, I did manage to get us a VPN, and I did manage to get it all working before the first quarter was over. Amazing. I think I fulfilled my wife of the year.

Yeah, that is a great nomination right there.

Yeah. I mean, not to rub it in or anything, but to revel in it.

Yeah.

The city was electric. And I was watching the end of the game. And you know, like, you know, they put in like a time delay and maybe direct TV as of this or CVS as of that or broadcasts.

So that comes to the end of the game, watching it with a 30 sec, like 10 seconds to go, all of a sudden I start hearing all the fireworks. And I’m just like, oh, they won.

Yeah. Because we were watching all of that from abroad, and I think all we’re going to do for this whole episode is we’re going to talk about the wonder that is-

Sports.

Sports, travel, places to go, and how people who aren’t from these places view potential vacation or trip destinations. And I got to say, New York City, I mean, it came out looking like the best place in the world.

Oh, yeah. It came out looking like a blast. I mean, I think people watch-

And it doesn’t always, it doesn’t always.

To say the least.

5:05

NYC Street Watch Parties

Yeah, but the Knicks managed to figure out how to-

You see the videos of the people putting the projector up on the wall in the West Village, and the entire community coming out.

It was so cool.

I mean, and it truly is New York City at its best when things like that happen.

Well, one of the things I read an article, and it was kind of a think piece, I don’t want to get too pretentious, but it was like the Knicks reminded New York City how to hang out, where you could just be like, what are your plans?

They’re like, I don’t have plans. I’m going to go walk and bump into a bunch of dudes on the street corner, and they’re going to be watching it in a bodega or at a projector or something.

I promise you, it will be more fun than whatever strictly planned watch party you could attend is, you know what I mean?

Yeah. Well, that’s what we’re going to do in Brooklyn if we would have been here. We’re going to buy a big TV, and put it out on our stoop.

Yeah.

That’s awesome.

I don’t know if somebody did that, but we have a pretty good block here.

But yeah, I am curious to see when the DMOs, and they surely are tracking this, like what the knock-on effect to the Knicks win, or more importantly, all of the publicity, good publicity, positive publicity, that New York City as a place got from the

New mayor, new champions, new image for New York City, right?

I mean, come on.

And all the videos of Mom Donnie celebrating were also hilarious. But I’m like, dude, you’ve got to get like a polo shirt or something. I respect the suit.

I do, but.

Oh, I saw him wearing not the suit and people were like clowning on him on Twitter and I thought that’s why he put the suit jacket over the jersey.

So he put it back on?

I thought maybe I’m wrong. I have no connection to the Mom Donnie campaign. I just saw it when he was just in the.

Yeah, I’ve got a uniform.

I now have to wear it forever and ever. Amen.

And I love how all parts of the city have been so in on it. Like white collar to blue collar, and in particular the Department of Transportation and Department of Sanitation, like the garbage man, I drove past the garbage depot.

It’s still orange and blue. They painted subway stops, they painted trash can. It’s just awesome.

It is so cool. And that kind of civic pride, and it should have done well. I mean, it should have flowed through.

7:42

World Cup Overlap Logistics

We’re now host city for, I mean, we were talking about these out, like people were in from out of town for the World Cup. I mean, this was coincided, it overlapped with the game.

So you had tourists in town for the World Cup opener in New York, New Jersey, who just happened to be in town when the Knicks won for the first time in 53 years. And it’s insane. And I was commuting in and out of Penn Station.

And I mean, we actually spoke, we’ve said this before that we’re really worried about what’s going to happen in the Middle Lands. And I will say, we’ll give them more credit than we did. Like it was slow, but orderly.

It got, they got there. They paid a hundred bucks. They got there, but it happened.

Yeah.

Like chaos was just slow and expensive.

I was going through Penn Station and the Knicks were playing, the World Cup was in the afternoon. And the next weekend was the US Open on Long Island at Shinnecock National on Long Island.

So I was like, oh my god, Penn Station, Madison Square Garden Penn Station has three major sporting events in the course. It was insane.

And like, you can’t get there. Like that’s the other thing that I think maybe out of towners don’t quite realize. Like, I mean, it’s like, that’s a hard place to get around here.

Like it’s not like, to say the least, like you, I mean, I suppose you could always just jump in an Uber, but like it would be expensive and not to mention, like it would take you a long, a longer time than public transit typically would.

Like we’re, we’re, we’re going under and over like rivers and like we’re on islands here, you know? And so you got to figure it out. Like they had to figure it out.

I’m so happy that they seem to have.

I think they have. I think it’s been, yeah. The sense that I get is it’s like, you got to be there two, three, four hours early and they’ll get you there if you get there early.

And they are charging like $100 just for the ticket there, not the ticket into the game. So it’s expensive and it’s slow, but it’s working, which is, I guess, we’ll take that, that W, we’ll take that win.

Yeah, and it’s been funny because I was walking through the Madison Square Garden area and they have all these charter buses lined up.

And some of them are like yellow school buses and there were tourists stopping to take pictures of the yellow school buses.

I have heard tourists or people who have come to visit me from not America who have said, well, I thought those were just like in movies.

Like I didn’t know that the school buses were like a real thing, the yellow school bus, that that was a real thing. They’re like delighted by this.

10:30

Tourists Love Middle America

I think that can take us into the next thing that we’re going to talk about, which I think is probably for America, it’s more significant than the Knicks winning although, let us not undersell that, is just this completely surprising, or we’ll talk

about whether it’s a surprise or not, completely surprising, completely joyous, and lovely online social media. So, extravaganza, that is, the European tourist discovering Middle America, Southern America, like not New York, not California.

So, like, what happens when they’re in St.

Louis, and what happens when they’re in Texas, and they are posting about all of the delightful trips to our gas stations, and to our Walmarts, and to our Costcos, and to our Waffle Houses, and talking about just how joyous it is.

And I kind of love it. I’m totally here for it. It’s hard to tell with the algorithm these days, like how much is going out to everybody, and how much you are just getting because you’ve clicked and watched the Norwegian fans doing their rowing.

I’ve watched like 17 videos from all angles of that.

I think we can safely say, Sarah, because we’ve discussed our algorithms before on this podcast, and they were pretty widely divergent. And I am getting Freddie from Germany, I am getting the Norwegians rowing, I’m getting the Tardin Army in Boston.

Yes, in Boston.

I think that this is a platform-wide phenomenon. I think it’s safe to say.

Gordon Smith, who is our airlines editor here at Skift.

Proud Scott.

Yeah, and Proud Scott was saying that he saw in the Boston Globe the other day that they took out a full-page ad thanking the fans from Scotland. Really?

That’s so cool.

Isn’t it?

That’s so cool. Isn’t that just lovely?

It is. And honestly, this is exactly, it’s exactly what sports, like for all of us cynical business folk or government officials are going to think about. Like this is exactly what sport is supposed to do, right?

Which is bring people together, kind of show hospitality of the host nation. That is what it is supposed to accomplish. And I think at least we’ve still got several weeks of the World Cup here.

I mean, we’re not even halfway through, I don’t think. I mean, it’s going gangbusters. I don’t know how, from a pure play perception, I’m very curious to get the hard numbers from hotels when it all shakes out.

Like after, when July is over and everything all wraps up, like where the numbers and where the spending actually did. But from a pure play PR and kind of how it looks to the rest of the world.

Brand USA, not the organization, but the royal brand USA.

The royal brand.

Yeah, it is doing great.

Well, I actually have some hard data for you, Sarah. I need to pull it up. But why don’t we talk about the brand aspect and I’ll pull up the hard data.

13:47

Brand USA Reset Moment

So let’s start with this brand aspect. Because we have talked about and we’ve covered in-depth tourism arrivals into the US or down. The brand is damaged.

I mean, it’s been a tough time for inbound tourism to the United States. Europeans are traveling abroad. Less cost is a concern.

Politics is a concern. At least we had the regional travel from Canada and Mexico, except we screwed that up a little bit too.

I’m not even going to say it. Continue.

But, sorry, but this feels like a moment for a brand reset. And it is, I mean, there is a lot of, I think, I hope, there is a lot of latent love out there for the United States. I think it is a great country.

And I think that’s sort of what’s happened is like, people are discovering what is so great about the United States, kind of authentically in real time and sharing it. And so it’s like, yeah, the headlines are there and I don’t know. Yeah.

I mean, let’s talk about that a little bit more.

Yeah, I do think and from all the videos that I’ve watched, and I’ve watched too many of them, Seth, I’ve watched like a gazillion video, like hours and hours and hours of tourists talking about their love for America now.

And a lot of it is funny and a lot of it is about the food. And I do feel like some of it’s a little tongue in cheek, like they are aware that Waffle House is not probably the pinnacle of American cuisine.

But I digress, the thing that I do see and I love hearing in almost all of them and it goes in a commonality among most of the videos is how surprised and delighted Europeans are and how nice Americans are and friendly.

15:25

Why Americans Feel Friendly

I love because I think that’s so true.

I mean, that’s something that I think about all the time is like, I think people, just like the school bus camp, the yellow school bus camp, Riele, the chatty American who will talk your ear off. The American who will just strike up a conversation.

So where are you from? Well, I’m from here. This is where I grew up.

I’m talking about my father and he always said this. What about your parents? I think the state Europeans especially, and the big breakout star is this guy, Freddie from Germany.

I love Germany. I have really good friends. I spent a long time there.

I love Germany. But let’s be honest about the Germans. I think they can even imagine such chattiness, such extraversion in Northern Europe and in Germany.

I mean, I think that’s so interesting about it.

If you ask a Knicks fan, like how to get to Madison Square Garden right now, they’ll talk to you and then they might hug you. Like that might happen.

They might tell you about where they were or their parents were the last time the Knicks won. And the 90s when we got really close and Ewan versus Jalen Brunson and lots of stuff to talk about.

And it’s also really funny to me, it’s funny watching the videos where people are driving around, like small town or rural America. They’re driving in their car. They’re saying, it’s everything I ever dreamed it would be.

For our eyes, it’s like we’re looking at the backyard of what is a very normal suburban or a little bit even farther out place, right?

And it’s everything I thought it would be, like these little houses just peppered along and like the white picket fence. They’re like, it’s real. It’s really real.

It really is like this.

Yeah. I think that a part of this is also that, and it’s us. For us, it’s like home, but like we know it’s not a stereotype.

But I think it’s kind of funny. Like I, it’s the reverse and it’s experience on our own home court.

And I think that’s part of it too, is that because international tourism has been flagging in the US and because domestic is always and will in a country of 350 million people, domestic tourism will always outweigh international tourism.

We don’t often get the chance to see our country through a foreigner’s eyes. Maybe you see it through a Michigander’s or a Californian’s or a Texan’s eyes but you don’t see it through a true foreigner’s eyes.

Whereas in a place like France where they get 100 million foreign tourists a year, they’re so much more used to the foreigner perspective on their own country.

18:11

DMOs and Small Town Appeal

And I think that’s one of the interesting things that’s happened here is that the trend that we have talked about and I presented this at our transatlantic summit about Americans going to Europe is that Americans don’t just want the gateway cities,

they don’t just want the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben, they want to go see the countryside. I went to, I think I talked on the podcast, I was in London recently for a wedding.

I went to the Cotswolds and I was like, it’s so nice to be in the real Britain. And obviously the real Britain is London and Manchester. And I’m like, oh, the Cotswolds, the real UK, the real Britain, the real England, right?

And I think we take for granted when we do that, when we go to Switzerland and we say, I don’t want to go to Zurich, I want to go to Lauderbrunnen or I don’t want to go to Rome, I want to go to Cuomo, whatever, it’s like, that’s not where the real

people live. They live in Rome, they live in London, and we are now getting, that’s true of America too.

And I think it’s also a big wake up call for both brand USA and now not brand USA, the Royal Week, brand USA, the brand, but also the actual DMO and also for all the regional DMOs.

The people out there running the Michigan DMO and the Detroit DMO and the, the Texas, like.

They’re going to, they’re going to have to monopolize on this big time. Yeah, they have not just New York.

It’s not just LA, it’s not just New York.

That people, they want to come to their little, you know, dot on the map. And it was funny, I, I think it was the Auburn Stadium they’re playing and somebody was just talking about how incredible the college stadium Auburn was.

And being from Michigan, I was like, oh, you should go to the big house. Like, I don’t think Detroit has, has anybody playing there, but it is the biggest of the football stadiums. So yeah, I completely agree.

20:08

Prediction on Inbound Rebound

And may I make a prediction, Seth?

Yes, please.

I think I want to go on the record here. I think that the decline in international tourists to the United States of America post-World Cup, I think it’ll turn around. I don’t know if it’ll be in August, because-

Oh, there’s always a lag.

There’ll be a lag.

Especially a trip like that.

20:33

Olympics Travel Momentum

Well, I think you’re right, because also, and I think, kind of by coincidence, but also by design, we’re going to have the Olympics.

Yeah.

So I think that this moment, we are so uniquely well-placed for that momentum to continue. You have this World Cup moment, and in two years, the world is going to be back in US and LA for the Olympics.

And people are going to have to make a decision now. Now, whether they want to go.

For 2028, which is what I’m saying. It won’t show up in the September data because you can’t make an impulse by to do a transatlantic or trans-pacific trip to the United States.

But in six, four, six months, even 2027, 2028 with the Olympics, I think the potential for serious momentum is there.

It will start to go back. It will start to normalize where 2025, 2026 will be seen as a blip. Perhaps the World Cup has healed some of the wounds.

21:38

Politics Off The Feed

The other thing that is interesting, speaking of those wounds, are that in none of these videos, none of this social content, is there anything political at all? Politics is not mentioned, which is good. And that is why, I think that is why.

I also did get the impression that, from some of the videos, that people are like, you know, I didn’t know what it was going to be like in the United States. But like, I didn’t think it was going to be like this.

Like inference being, I thought it was going to be all like-

Dangerous.

Yeah, like guns and politics constantly, because that’s what you see on the news. And it just, you know, in your typical suburban or rural place in Missouri, that’s probably just- that’s just not what-

or in upstate New York or anywhere. Like, that is not the status quo. That is not how people live.

Yeah.

22:35

Buc-ees Goes Viral

I wonder if- can you give me one second? I want to grab a prop real fast, if you’ll allow.

Yes.

Oh, please. Please grab some props. I have no idea, ladies and gentlemen, dear listener, what he is going to come back with.

It’s not a good prop.

I thought I had a stuffy from Bucky’s.

Yeah.

But what I actually have are Bucky’s branded flip-flops.

Let me see. You kind of sheepishly held them into the camera.

Yeah.

I want to see all of them.

It’s kind of gross. Well, all right.

Why do you have Bucky’s? Okay. But Seth, why do you have Bucky’s flip-flops?

Yeah.

So what’s not being discussed is the politics is violence is any of this stuff. What is being discussed is America’s potentially greatest, most viral gas station chain, which is Bucky’s. And I had the pleasure of visiting one.

And let me tell you, it is unreal, absolutely unreal. I bought Bucky’s branded flip-flops with a little Bucky the Beaver logo. My wife has Bucky’s pajamas.

We have full Bucky’s gear. And we are, so we are in it. We are in it.

And I’m glad that that the American gas station is getting, not just the American gas station. It’s love. The love it deserves.

Like so much love.

So I must say, like as an American, here for any of our international listeners, here’s a, I’m from the Midwest. I’m from Michigan. I travel a lot there.

I’ve never gone to, I’ve never been to a Bucky’s. Like where are they? This is how big the United States is.

In the South.

It’s a big Texas thing. And it’s big in the South. So it’s alongside the Waffle House as I think, and a new and emerging giant of the South.

Well, especially now.

God, can you imagine to be a Bucky’s executive at this exact moment?

When is the Bucky’s IPO? They have hundreds, each single Bucky’s will have like hundreds of gas stations, hundreds of the bathrooms. They advertise the world’s cleanest bathrooms, and they have hundreds of stalls, like dozens of stalls.

I heard they make brisket.

Yeah, fresh brisket.

It’s insane. It’s unbelievable. They have a full line of merchandise from flip-flops to hats to scented candles.

And they’ve got brisket and jerky and toilets. And it’s just in gas. It’s just wonderful.

In gas.

It’s just wonderful.

When is the Bucky’s IPO?

I think that should be the title of this podcast.

24:53

Most American Experiences

Well, so here’s a question. What is the most American thing you would like our European, APEC tourists to know about the United States? What is the thing that you would like them to discover?

For me, it is the multiculturalism.

And in the sense of the diversity of like, here in New York in a story, it’s the most diverse zip code in the world. You can eat all over the world.

But not just international diversity, but just that Michigan really is a different culture from New York, really is a different culture from Texas, really is a different culture from California.

And I think that’s like one of my favorite things is how each region of the United States and even each state, even each city has its own identity and has so much pride in that identity. And I love that. And that’s what’s so fun for me.

I had a former boss of mine was British, and he had never been to Texas before.

And he came back one weekend and had been to Texas. And he said, Sarah, have you ever been to a rodeo? And I said, no, I’ve never been to a rodeo.

He’s like, what are you doing here? He’s like, you should go to a rodeo immediately. Immediately.

And we don’t really have rodeos in Michigan, amazingly. It’s not our jam because it is very, very different than Texas, to your point. You can kind of live a whole world within the confines of the United States of America.

Everything is bigger in America.

And not just in Texas. It really is true. The national parks really are huge.

The cities like New York really are massive. And rodeo is a real thing. Demolition derbies, monster truck rallies, they are real.

I have been to many of those.

College football, it’s real.

It’s all college, like Big Ten, like Big Ten college football is real.

I would love it if European travelers who have come here. Because Americans are not the big soccer fans, right? So traditional, I mean, they’re of course our pockets, and we’re doing exceptionally well, I’m told.

Not a sports fan, full disclosure. I am a big fan of cultural phenomenon, however, and viral wonder, which is what we’re talking about today.

But I would love it if those people who are coming to the United States, if they ever get to get back here in the fall, go to a Big Ten football game on a Saturday afternoon in the fall.

It is one of the most quintessential American experiences you can ever have. If you’ve seen it on TV, I will tell you if you see it in real life, it’s better. And it’s amazing.

I would say it’s probably as close as Americans get to what all of our European friends have as their National World Cup experience. It’s this kind of mass delusion for a few hours or unification around your team and in their colors.

28:06

Rediscovering Niagara Falls

I wonder too if there’s an opportunity for Americans to rediscover America and parts of America as well.

You’ve never been to a Buckeyes and you’re intrigued. I’ve been following, I was prepping for this podcast, it was hard work and I was scrolling through Freddie the German’s Twitter feed. And he was just at Niagara Falls.

And he was like, this is incredible. And I have to tell you, and I am plunged in, I don’t want to, I know I’m going to get an angry email from the upstate New York marketing folks and all the hotels there. And so I’ve never had any interest in.

It always seemed a little, I’m sorry, I’m going to be mean, but it seemed a little tacky. It seemed to have a different era of tourism, of the Borscht Belt and upstate New York. And now we all travel internationally.

And again, here’s this German from, I mean, literally the other side of the world. And he’s like, Niagara Falls, how incredible, Lady of the Lake. It’s such, it’s so amazing.

And I think that there is an, I’m like, I’m like, I got to question myself. I’m correcting myself on the record, public penance for all my upstate New York folks.

But I’m like, maybe I should be doing more of that and less, not less of, but like as a supplement to some of these other stuff.

And so I think this is an incredible moment for the tourism industry, hotels, airlines, destinations, online travel agencies, both to reverse and grow some much needed momentum for inbound, but also to potentially re-inspire domestic tourism,

especially if costs stay high. Like I’ll tell you what, Niagara Falls is a lot cheaper than Frankfurt. And it’s funny that a guy from Frankfurt sold, actually I don’t know if it’s crap in Germany, sold me on Niagara Falls sort of stuff.

Yeah, we went to my parents’ house in Michigan for Christmas this past year. And we drove through Canada on the way back and we drove right by Niagara Falls, got to see it. It was going, it wasn’t frozen.

And it was kind of amazing. As you sit in line going through the border, it’s like right there. It’s very beautiful.

And I was just in Toronto on a business trip.

We knew some subscribers and clients of ours and partners of ours. And by the way, the vibes in Toronto on a world, we were on a match day, we’re excellent.

So we’ve been talking about the US and it’s true, we are US based and there are more cities in the US. But this is not just a US story. It’s a Canada story.

It’s a Mexico story, Mexico city. Monterey is one of those stealthy cities that is a massive city. It is a host city, Toronto, Vancouver.

Yeah.

So I think it’s just exciting.

30:32

Early Hotel Data Boost

By the way, Sarah, I did promise you some numbers.

Oh, yes. Yes, you did.

So I had something come across my inbox, Truist Securities, which is an investment analysis firm, and C. Patrick Scholls is their lead analyst, Cover Hotels, and he put out a note.

It was actually a couple of days ago last week about the very first few matches. And he said, look, we’ve had the first few matches. And so far, the results are actually positive.

So he said, weekend at 6.13, June 13. So that will be last week as a little for a couple of weeks as the time of this recording, by the time it airs will be a little bit longer ago, but just for reference.

And the first the first game was in SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. And they had for these markets on game day, they observed strong RevPAR performance. Los Angeles plus 35% RevPAR year on year.

Boston plus 24% year on year. New York, New Jersey plus 38% and San Francisco Bay Area plus 50%. And on the actual day of the game, LA opening match had RevPAR on game day 35%.

For the week, LA’s RevPAR was plus 14 and the US was plus 7. And for the month, LA’s RevPAR June to date was plus 13.5 versus the US plus 9.6. So it compresses over time, right?

LA did a little bit better than the US over the course of the month. They did twice as good over the course of the week when they hosted the game. And on the actual game day, they saw an insane 35% RevPAR bump.

So the signs are there that it’s coming, but that it’s coming in these bursts. On the game day and on the week, but maybe for the rest of the month, it averages out.

Overall, the performance has been surprisingly strong, and I think it speaks also to the last-minute nature of these things, and also to some of the joy and wonder of these things, where it’s easy to be a cynic, and then when you see it start to

Yeah, maybe I want to apply to St.

Louis and go see a game. Right?

Exactly.

Maybe.

32:50

Winners And Losers

All right. So shall we do our winners and losers? We’ve talked about the US.

I mean, and Mexico and Canada and FIFA and the World Cup, obviously very much a winner. Do you have another winner for the week, Seth?

I mean, New York Knicks can still count as a winner, for sure.

It can still count.

Can I give Toronto a shout out? Can I call Toronto a winner? I was in Toronto for the first time.

Lovely people, lovely, great organizations we met with. Definitely a winner in my book, too.

33:18

Mexico Sargassum Crisis

So I’ve got the loser of the week, and I will tell you, this is a little bit of a pivot, but I was in Mexico, I was on the Riviera Maya, and I will say, we’ve written about this at Skift.

I saw the seaweed situation down there firsthand.

It’s bad, right?

It’s bad. I was telling Will before we hopped on that my grandma had a trailer on the banks of the Mississippi, which is lovely in Minnesota, and I spent many summer day jumping into that water.

But that is very famously a muddy water river, huckleberry fin and all of that good stuff. But that is what the crystal blue green water of the Mexican Caribbean looks like now in the summer. I wouldn’t go back in the summer.

And so, I’m very curious. And I’m a big, you’ve heard me talk about Mexico many times on this podcast. Like, I’m a huge Mexico fan.

I will continue to go down there other times of the year. You know, this is a summer situation for them. But I’m curious if they’re going to lose the summer, and what that means for hotels, and what that means for Mexican tourism.

I know that they’ve put out, they’ve got the Navy on it. When you fly in, you can see the barriers they’ve set up in the ocean.

There’s not so much you can do.

It doesn’t work, like you can see it doesn’t work from the air, because you can see it all backed up, and then you also see all of it on the other side of it as well.

So I’m very curious, like if it’s going to be like, this is nature and we cede to mother nature here, or if there is going to be a, if someone, whether it be a hotel, like all the hotels get together and try to fix it from the private sector, if it’s

I worry it may not be fixable.

They may just have to pivot into more cultural tourism, into the loom and the party scene and the food scene. The government, as I understand it, is already on it.

And many of the hotels are, we’re talking about hotel margins, they hire people to go up there with rakes and rake the beaches and all that stuff. I mean, this is-

To rake the beaches? Yeah, rake. I know, I saw them doing it.

It’s almost like during COVID or like theater. It’s theater. Because to have, it’s like a drop in the ocean.

And that-

Well, literally. And then they rake it all up, and then what happens? It rots and starts to smell.

So you got to get rid of it immediately and you got to put it somewhere else. I mean, it’s a major problem. And this is, I mean, I’m not trying to be on New York City liberal high wars here, but like this is climate change.

Oh, yeah.

And home to roots in ways that’s like, who bears this cost?

Who’s responsible for this? No one. How do you fix it?

You can’t. You lose brand equity. And it’s sarcasm.

It’s all over the Gulf Coast. It’s all over Florida. It’s all over Mexico.

And we’re also seeing increase in issues with beach erosions. I’ll tell you, I know a beach resort that I love that barely has a beach anymore.

Yeah.

And I mean, at some point, you just build a pool. I hate to say it, but that’s like, but yeah, I mean.

36:49

Cenotes And Closing

We hung out by the pool and went to the cenotes, which I love.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a cenote, Seth. Have you ever done a dive in a cenote? Yeah.

It’s incredible.

A little scary.

It’s like.

You’ve done it, right?

Oh yeah. Yeah. Dos ojos.

It’s, have you done dos ojos in that?

And then you come up into that air pocket? Yeah. Isn’t that so cool?

I have great pictures.

That’s awesome.

Yeah.

So anyway, so, so yeah. So unfortunately, my loser of the week is the poor beaches of Mexico.

Yeah.

So yeah.

It’s a good one. That’s a sticky one, but it’s a good one.

Sticky one. So I look forward to going back to Mexico in the fall or the winter.

Absolutely.

Or, you know, and so then I can enjoy that crystal clear water.

In the fall, after your Big Ten game on a crisp, cool autumn day. Yes.

You take a plane from the big house in Ann Arbor, Michigan, right into Cancun, and then go jump in the water and have your America’s experience of all the wonders that we have to share.

That sounds like a perfect World Cup North America follow-up marketing campaign. You saw the World Cup, you saw the cities now. Come back in the fall and do Sarah’s World Cup North American itinerary.

I love it.

I love it. Okay. Well, thank you, everybody.

It’s so great to be back with you and we will see you next week. I’ll be here.