By Owen Tucker-Smith
Mae Stewart has prepared for two years to host Airbnb guests at her Atlanta home during this summer's World Cup.
The design consultant refurnished the floors, relit the rooms and replaced the vanities. She put in new countertops and faucets. She monitored the pricing strategy for competing homes and made sure to rent hers out enough times to generate reviews with a high rating.
Stewart did all this, spending roughly $60,000 in total, to lure soccer ticket holders who would be willing to splurge on her three-bedroom house. She is charging roughly $4,500 for a weeklong stay in mid-July during the tournament, about three times the price of what she'll charge shortly after the World Cup.
Now, she just needs someone to actually come.
With the games less than two months away, Stewart is among thousands of Airbnb hosts hoping for last-minute bookings. Uncertain travelers are grappling with surging costs from dynamic ticket pricing and pricier airfare. Hosts are also contending with the number of foreign fans put off by U.S. politics and more burdensome requirements to enter the country.
Airbnb is advising hosts not to panic. Many bookings typically land shortly before a marquee event begins. Plenty of soccer fans won't want to book a stay for a later round in the tournament until they know that their team has made it to that stage, according to Juan David Borrero, Airbnb's global head of partnerships.
"I think we're going to see more demand as the tournament starts to unfold," he said, "just because that is the nature of the tournament."
But that requires much patience from those who have been banking for months -- sometimes years -- on a hefty payday. The bulk of World Cup hosts on Airbnb, and other short-term rental companies such as Vrbo, are still waiting for guests.
In Philadelphia, 42% of available short-term rentals during the World Cup's group stage have been booked, according to rental data firm AirDNA. That's up from roughly 29% during the same period last year, but it still leaves most hosts waiting for a match. Boston, with a rate hovering around 55%, is the only city with more than half rented.
"I don't think it's going to be the huge windfall that I once thought it was," Stewart said.
A Deloitte report, commissioned by Airbnb, had forecast high demand for these short-term rentals, in part because of surging hotel-room prices that traditionally come with blockbuster events.
But demand has been soft for those rooms. Some hotels have cut prices, while Jan Freitag, a hotel analyst at real-estate data firm CoStar, said many have eased minimum-stay requirements. Bookings in host cities for some matches are below where they were for the same period last year.
"Isn't there a World Cup going on?" Freitag said.
Meanwhile, Airbnb is launching an aggressive marketing campaign ahead of the World Cup, which lasts for a month in June and July and could net hosts more than $200 million, according to Deloitte's analysis. It is offering $750 cash bonuses for new users.
The company also created an earnings calculator that estimates what hosts can earn based on market demand. A Philadelphia family renting out a three-bedroom home for the whole month can make more than $8,000.
Some cities have joined Airbnb in trying to make hosting a more appealing proposition. Kansas City, for example, has lowered permit fees for those hoping to host during the World Cup. But in regions like New York City, strict regulations against short-term rentals have shut out potential hosts.
The company is putting on host workshops in all 16 cities in the U.S., Mexico and Canada and is seeing "surging" demand, Borrero said.
The rentals still on the market are much more expensive than the ones that have successfully booked, said Jamie Lane, chief economist for AirDNA. Many guests will wait until the last minute to book and are willing to pay higher prices as a result. But hosts may also be overly optimistic.
"There's also the dreamers, who think they can get $2,000, $5,000 a night," Lane said.
Some hosts are refusing to budge on costs, insistent that a flood of bookers are coming. Kat Longoria owns an apartment below her home in Houston that has been booked for about a third of the month. She purchased the property years ago when it was advertised as "Airbnb-friendly."
Longoria has had mixed experiences with Airbnb -- she still remembers the night a guest threw a party and trashed the place. But she sees the World Cup as an opportunity to make extra cash. She set her prices just below what local hotels are charging, and has monitored competing homes to see if others are adjusting rates.
"There's not a whole lot out there," said Longoria. "So I don't have any intentions of lowering my prices."
The $750 incentive from Airbnb hasn't been enough to convince everyone.
Zach McKinney lives in a three-bedroom Seattle townhouse 20 minutes from the stadium where the U.S. will face off against Australia in mid-June. He's seen Airbnb's advertising, but isn't quite sure if renting his house to strangers for a few thousand dollars is worth it.
"If it was $500 a day or more, that'd be tempting," he said. "Maybe we could go on a camping trip and walk away with $2,000 in profit." But he calculated that he would have to pay up to $1,000 just to move his family's belongings into storage and get the place ready for guests. When he considered the risks, it felt like a less enticing offer.
A company representative said property damage during Airbnb stays is rare, and that it has a program that covers the cost of damage to homes and belongings.
Still, McKinney is a bit wary. "We just bought our kids a pretty nice set of bunk beds," he said.
Write to Owen Tucker-Smith at Owen.Tucker-Smith@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 30, 2026 05:30 ET (09:30 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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