By Sasha Abramsky
This article was originally published by Truthout
Hotel bookings lag in all US host cities, and in several a majority of hotel owners say the tournament is a “non-event.”
Since Donald Trump’s second inauguration, the number of international travelers visiting the United States has fallen by more than 5 percent. The number of Canadians visiting the country has plummeted by more than 20 percent.
All told, the fall-off in international tourism has translated into a decline of $8.4 billion in tourists’ spending in the U.S.
The World Travel and Tourism Council has estimated that 80 million more people traveled internationally in 2025 as compared to 2024. Yet, with horror stories circulating of tourists being arrested and sent to immigration detention centers for weeks or months, and of travelers having to hand U.S. border agents access to their cell phones and laptops, none of that tourism boom is filtering down to the U.S. And would-be tourists may grow even more leery if Trump succeeds in implementing his proposal to force many of them to disclose the last five years of posts on their social media accounts.
Many Canadians are outraged at Trump’s continued attacks on their country and by his repeated declarations that Canada should be annexed by the U.S. And many Europeans are horrified by the U.S.’s turn toward a nativism that in some ways resembles European fascism from nearly a hundred years ago. Put simply, an awful lot of people the world over are voting with their feet and their wallets; they are simply choosing to go elsewhere and spend their tourism money in countries that don’t make foreigners feel so unwelcome and scared.
For the travel industry, which generally operates on thin margins, the soccer World Cup was supposed to be a tonic. Hoping to boost the event, FIFA, the international soccer governing body, went out of its way to sweeten the deal for Trump; it gave him a golden replica of the World Cup trophy and awarded him a gilded “FIFA peace prize” in place of the Nobel for which he so loudly yearns.
Earlier this year, the tourism industry seemed to expect all of this FIFA sycophancy to pay off. In the 16 host cities, spread across Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, hotels raised their prices for World Cup stays by an average of more than 300 percent. Yet according to recent survey data gathered by the American Hotel and Lodging Association, in all of the 11 host cities in the U.S., hotel bookings haven’t taken off, and in several of the cities a majority of hotel owners now describe the tournament as a “non-event.” In consequence, hotels have again begun lowering their prices. The New York Times recently reported that room prices for World Cup dates in the host cities are now down 40 percent from their peak earlier this year.
In normal times, an administration with the opportunity to showcase the country it governs during the world’s premier international sporting event would go out of its way to make life easy for visitors before and during the event. But instead of taking this route, the Trump administration is doubling down on its hostility to foreign visitors.
Newly installed Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin has been doing the rounds on conservative media for the past few weeks, repeatedly threatening to shut off international travel in and out of airports in cities with sanctuary policies. If the administration follows through, international flights in and out of New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Portland, Seattle, and numerous other cities would be banned, making it all but impossible for most international travelers to easily access the U.S.
At the same time, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has repeatedly threatened to make its presence felt inside soccer stadiums, sowing deep unease among fans and workers alike. As I wrote in Truthout recently, Unite Here Local 11 workers, who staff the concessions at the SoFi stadium in LA, have voted to walk off the job should ICE start raiding soccer games in the city of Angels.
More generally, citizens of 38 countries are impacted by either full or partial travel bans into the U.S., and citizens from dozens of additional countries are facing freezes on the processing of their visas — which in practice means that unless those residents already have entry visas, they will not be coming into the United States for the World Cup. In other words, people from upward of one-third of the world’s countries (nearly all people of color from Africa, Asia, and parts of Latin America) now face almost insurmountable logistical hurdles when trying to enter the country legally. The ban extends to citizens of Haiti, Iran, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast — all four of which are fielding World Cup teams. Astoundingly, this means that their fans will automatically be excluded from attending the tournament. Last week, a Somali referee, who was supposed to be officiating in the games, was denied entry into the U.S.
Even for those technically allowed in, the cost will be prohibitive. Many tourists now have to pay a $250 “visa integrity fee.” For a family of three or four, that’s the equivalent of adding another international ticket into their shopping cart. And citizens of a slew of countries, many of them World Cup participants, now have to post a “bond” of between $5,000 and $15,000 to ensure that they don’t overstay their visas. While the State Department has promised to waive these fees for players and other team members, as well as for fans who purchased World Cup tickets before April 15 and filled in additional paperwork via the FIFA website, the mere existence of such a bond system will likely scare off many would-be visitors.
But the travel industry’s woes related to the World Cup go even deeper still. For months now a growing chorus of groups and individuals has called for a boycott of Trump’s World Cup. The advocates of the boycott include ex-FIFA head Sepp Blatter, as well as a vice president of the German Football Federation. More than a hundred civil and human rights organizations have also published a letter warning World Cup visitors of the dangers of visiting the U.S. under Trump.
All of this is adding up to a moment of truth for the tourism industry in a Trumpified America. Sure, the stadiums will likely be filled — and many fans will put down tens of thousands of dollars to see their teams play. But they won’t be filled with nearly as many international fans as is the norm for World Cup games. People may come in and out for a day or two from neighboring states, but fewer will come from overseas and make a full-length vacation of it. And in consequence the demand for hotel rooms and the amount of money injected into the tourist economy won’t be nearly as high as organizers thought they would be.
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