Key Takeaways
- Kansas City led all World Cup host markets with a 51 percent increase in short-term rental RevPAR
- Nightly rates across the 13 host markets climbed about 20 percent from last year
- Guests generally booked shorter stays built around individual matches
Kansas City scored one of the biggest wins of the World Cup, and it happened off the field.
The city delivered the strongest short-term rental revenue growth of any U.S. or Canadian host market during the 2026 tournament, according to a new KeyData analysis.
Kansas City’s adjusted revenue per available rental, or RevPAR, jumped 51 percent compared with the same period last year. The surge was powered by a 42 percent increase in average daily rates and a 6 percent rise in paid occupancy.
New York and Newark finished second, with RevPAR climbing 40 percent. The market also posted the largest occupancy increase among the host cities at 17 percent, while nightly rates rose 19 percent.
San Francisco Bay rounded out the top three with a 33 percent RevPAR gain, driven largely by higher prices rather than packed calendars, while Philadelphia’s ADR was up 36 percent and Boston was up 30 percent.
Across all 13 host markets, RevPAR increased about 24 percent as nightly rates climbed roughly 20 percent. Occupancy, however, rose only about 3 percent, showing that higher prices did most of the heavy lifting.
Travelers also kept their trips short. Average stay length fell about 3 percent, with some fans apparently arriving for a match and heading home soon after.
Vancouver was the outlier. Guests stayed 18 percent longer there even as nightly rates remained mostly unchanged.
“The 2026 FIFA World Cup delivered a real lift for professionally managed vacation rentals, but the results tell a more interesting story than a simple demand surge. The cities that performed best weren’t always the largest markets,” said Sally Henry, VP of Market Intelligence and Insights at KeyData.
“Kansas City outgrew both New York and Los Angeles because operators there priced into the demand rather than just filling more nights. That’s the lesson worth taking forward. Occupancy alone doesn’t win these events; the operators who read the demand early and hold their pricing discipline are the ones who come out ahead. With more major events heading to North America over the next few years, the markets that treat this as a playbook rather than a one-off will be best placed to benefit,” Henry added.
Airbnb’s pricing advice to Kansas City hosts
According to Spectrum News, Airbnb spent the past six months working directly with the Kansas City Tourism Department and the mayor’s office, running seminars for residents interested in listing their homes for the first time.
The outreach added several thousand new hosts to the platform in the metro alone.
“The host controls the price on their house. The host also keeps 85% of what you pay to stay with them. So they control a lot of the pricing and I think the pricing has really come down in those outlying areas to really start getting more bookings going on,” said Vincent Frillici, Airbnb’s Public Policy Lead.
Frillici also noted that first-time hosts tend to over-price themselves, which he attributed to slower booking velocity in properties farther from the stadium.
Airbnb addressed the cultural gap too by coaching hosts on amenities favored by Argentine guests, including a specific style of tea and kettle that travel industry observers have pointed to as a marker of how platforms now tailor host prep for international demand events.
To boost desirability further, the platform provided hosts with ideas for making their spaces feel more guest-ready for international travelers.
Airbnb originally projected a $105 million economic impact from guest spending in the Kansas City market during the tournament, supporting an estimated 403 full-time equivalent jobs.
Kansas City also ranked first among all U.S. host cities for the share of women hosts, which was reportedly 60 percent of the city’s host base.
