Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, July 10, 2026 – Hotel occupancy fell in each of Mexico’s three World Cup host cities in June, running counter to months of forecasts that the tournament would produce a large increase in overnight travel.
Guadalajara recorded the largest decline. Hotel occupancy finished June at 56 percent, seven percentage points below the same month in 2025. Monterrey slipped 5.8 percentage points to 53.5 percent, while Mexico City fell 2 percentage points to 56.5 percent, based on preliminary tourism figures presented this week by the National Tourism Business Council and the Sustainable Tourism Advanced Research Center at Universidad Anáhuac Cancún.
Hotels still gained protection from sharply higher nightly prices. Average room rates rose 41.4 percent in Guadalajara, 39.8 percent in Monterrey and 46.7 percent in Mexico City, according to industry figures released after the presentation.
The preliminary figures also point to a much smaller international travel surge than national projections suggested. STARC estimated that about 175,000 international travelers entered Mexico specifically because of the tournament. Deloitte had projected 280,000 international arrivals tied to the event earlier in the year.
The federal government had promoted an estimate of 5.5 million additional visitors during the World Cup period. Antonio Cosío, president of the National Tourism Business Council, said actual tournament-related travel may be closer to 850,000.
The STARC figure covers international travelers attributed directly to the tournament, while the 850,000 estimate appears to cover a broader pool of World Cup travel. The government’s 5.5 million figure was described as additional visitors and was not accompanied by a public methodology detailed enough to reconcile it with hotel stays or border arrivals.
The hotel comparison is less ambiguous. All three host cities sold a smaller share of their available rooms than they did one year earlier.
Francisco Madrid, director of STARC, said business travel appears to have been displaced as companies and regular travelers avoided host cities, expecting congestion, higher costs, and disruption. Some soccer fans also made shorter trips, stayed with relatives or traveled between cities without booking a hotel every night.
Restaurant results show the same pattern. A survey by the national restaurant chamber found that 70 percent of establishments reported no overall increase in sales, and more than half operated at less than 50 percent capacity. Cantinas and bars performed better, with reported sales increases of 80 percent and 55 percent, respectively.
The findings matter in Puerto Vallarta because Jalisco spent months presenting the coast as an extension of Guadalajara’s tournament economy. Local tourism leaders promoted hotel packages, viewing events and travel after match days, even as early reservations remained soft.
Jalisco later reported 438 million pesos in combined World Cup-related economic activity across Puerto Vallarta and the state’s Pueblos Mágicos. That estimate may include event attendance, food sales and other spending beyond hotel stays. It has not changed the weaker trend visible in Vallarta’s main tourism indicators.
Puerto Vallarta International Airport lost nearly 484,000 passengers during the first half of 2026. June traffic fell 18.7 percent from one year earlier, including a 33.4 percent drop in international passengers. The city also opened the summer vacation period with hotel occupancy only slightly above 60 percent.
Those numbers do not rule out spending connected to fan zones, concerts or domestic travelers. They do show that World Cup activity was not sufficient to reverse the broader decline in air traffic or to produce a clear hotel surge on the coast.
Final monthly data from DataTur’s hotel monitoring system and detailed state revenue figures will be needed to separate higher room prices from actual occupied nights, event attendance, and new visitor spending. The early result is already clear in one respect. Mexico’s host cities charged much more per room, but none filled a larger share of available rooms
