Perry's Pen

If you are looking to book a room or just tracking the local tourism economy, the current state of Toronto’s hotel market during the World Cup is full of surprises. Despite years of projections warning of a severe room shortage, Toronto hotels are experiencing unexpectedly high vacancy rates, with roughly half of the city’s hotel rooms remaining unbooked as the tournament gets underway.¹

Data from the hospitality analytics firm CoStar highlights a notable shift in expected demand:

Current Occupancy vs. Previous Years

• Current Tournament Occupancy: Hotel occupancy on World Cup match days is hovering just over 46% to 47%.²
• The Vacancy Reality: This means 53% to 54% of hotel rooms across the city are currently vacant and available.
• Historical Comparison: This is a sharp contrast to a typical June in Toronto. In June 2025, hotel occupancy sat close to 60%, and normal summer projections usually track closer to 80%.³

Why is Vacancy So High?

Several key factors have led to an abundance of empty hotel rooms:

• The FIFA “Block Drop”: Tourism groups and local hotels originally expected a massive chunk of their business to come from blocks of rooms contracted directly by FIFA for athletes, staff, and delegates. However, FIFA ended up releasing thousands of these reserved room nights back to the public market across all 16 North American host cities, creating a sudden surplus of empty rooms.⁴⁵
• Aggressive Pricing & “Economic Displacement”: Anticipating a historic influx of soccer fans, many hotels heavily jacked up their standard room rates. This pricing surge had a counter-effect—it priced out transient leisure travelers and caused major corporate conventions and business events to steer clear of the city or reschedule to May or July to avoid the chaos.
• The Travel Logistics of a Multi-Country Tournament: Because the 2026 tournament is spread across Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, international fan bases are thinking twice about booking extended hotel stays in a single city. High airfares and jet fuel costs mean fans are traveling dynamically rather than anchoring down in Toronto hotels.⁶

What This Means for Travelers

If you are planning to travel into the city for a game or a summer visit, the low occupancy is actually working in your favor. Because the expected “base business” from corporate groups and FIFA didn’t materialize, hotels are facing increased pressure to fill rooms.⁷

Destination Toronto has noted that hotel rates are beginning to drop as venues scramble to capture last-minute individual bookings. Furthermore, secondary accommodation markets are seeing a similar cooling trend; short-term rental platforms like Airbnb indicate that roughly 70% to 80% of remaining Toronto listings for June are currently priced under $500 per night.⁸

While the city’s hospitality sector is still highly optimistic that a late flurry of domestic travelers will help fill the gap as the matches progress into July, Toronto is currently far more accessible—and vacant—than anyone anticipated.

1. https://torontolife.com/city/hotels-fifa-world-cup-vacancy-vancouver-tourism/ ↩︎
2. https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/vancouver-toronto-hotels-less-than-half-full-ahead-of-world-cup-matches/#:~:text=Toronto’s%20data%20is%20similar.,of%20almost%2021%20per%20cent. ↩︎
3. https://www.cp24.com/news/canada/2026/06/10/vancouver-toronto-hotels-less-than-half-full-ahead-of-world-cup-matches/#:~:text=Toronto’s%20data%20is%20similar.,of%20almost%2021%20per%20cent. ↩︎
4. https://globalnews.ca/news/11895065/toronto-hotel-world-cup-bookings/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThere%20was%20an%20expectation%20that,pressure%20on%20the%20transient%20business.%E2%80%9D ↩︎
5. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-hotels-world-cup-fifa-9.7208717#:~:text=After%20FIFA%20cancelled%20thousands%20of%20its%20own%20hotel%20reservations%20across,bookings%20in%20U.S.%20host%20cities. ↩︎
6. https://thelogic.co/news/fifa-world-cup-canada-toronto-vancouver-hotels/#:~:text=Elenis%20attributed%20low%20demand%20to,a%20much%20larger%20geographic%20area. ↩︎
7. https://globalnews.ca/news/11895065/toronto-hotel-world-cup-bookings/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThere%20was%20an%20expectation%20that,pressure%20on%20the%20transient%20business.%E2%80%9D ↩︎
8. https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/vancouver-toronto-hotels-less-than-half-full-ahead-of-world-cup-matches/#:~:text=Airbnb%20told%20CTV%20News%20it,Journalist%2C%20CTV%20National%20News ↩︎