Arnie Weissmann
The recent focus on the expense of seeing a World Cup or NBA Finals game may suggest that the opportunity for travel advisors to send clients to an in-person experience at a major event is shrinking from their wealthy clients to only the super-rich.
The merely wealthy may not be completely out of the running, but they may have to make the hard decision about either going forward with plans to remodel the kitchen or sitting in nosebleed seats.
But there are alternatives for advisors and clients to provide World Cup memories at a fraction of the cost of watching the game from a stadium seat.
I attended the World Cup Group 1 stage round match between Norway and Iraq in Foxborough, Mass., near Boston, courtesy of Norwegian-based Thon Hotels. The 90-minute game was exciting, but the preceding 24 hours provided a unique cultural experience that would be hard to match even on a trip to Norway or Iraq.
I had taken a walk through Boston Common the evening before the match and found a sizeable rally of excited Iraq fans. Entire families were singing, chanting and celebrating. It was an electric atmosphere.
A little more than a mile away, the Norwegians gathered for their equally buoyant rally, waving flags, chanting and singing songs.
And on game day, even if you lacked a ticket to get into the stadium, you could steep yourself in pregame excitement at Patriot Place, the open-air mall attached to Gillette Stadium (renamed Boston Stadium for the World Cup). Fans were gearing up for the game, and the energy was high. Partisans of both teams gathered outside bars and restaurants waving flags and chanting or standing in line to get their faces painted. If you were lucky, you might even have crossed paths with Norway's prime minister, Jonas Gahr Store.
This all touches on the findings of a Dutch study that shows that trip-planning and the anticipation of the trip often brings more happiness and satisfaction than the trip itself. And in the case of a soccer match, pregame excitement can be enjoyed by fans of both teams; postgame, one side will party on, the other will deflate. (In the match, Norway came out on top, 4-1.)
Also joining the group that Thon Hotels brought to the game was Joe Diaz, co-founder and chief product officer of Afar. He said his publication put together a guide to the cities hosting World Cup matches that would be valuable even to those without tickets. "There's a spirit that this tournament creates, a sense that the world is coming together in a powerful way," he said. "And when you're there, you can feel it."
Megan Cronin, senior product executive for the U.K., Ireland and Benelux for the upscale, Boston-based Audley Travel was also attending the game as a guest of Thon Hotels. Cronin said that even more noticeable to her than clients traveling to cities in the U.S., Canada or Mexico to see World Cup games was the number of clients inspired to book trips to the countries that qualified.
That trend, she believes, is fueled in part by the nature of America's melting-pot citizenry. The sense of pride felt when a team connected to their heritage made it into the tournament seems to awaken the desire to explore their culture.
She said that one destination whose team had just played in Boston has experienced a particular boost: Scotland. Off-the-beaten-track Scotland, in particular. "They've done Edinburgh, they've done Glasgow and want to go more remote: the Isle of Skye, Orkney, Shetland."
How travel professionals feel about the current bumper crop of global events may depend upon where in the travel ecosystem they sit. Another Thon Hotels guest, Ana Rooney, vice president of tour design and operations for Collette Tours, characterized 2026 contract negotiations with hotels as "not the most fun."
Hotels in cities hosting major events, she continued, will obviously want to take advantage of the opportunity and increase rates.
"There's always something around the world, right?" she said. "But whether it's a holiday or D-Day celebrations or major event, there's always someone who looks at revenue and sees a business opportunity. For those of us in design and contracts? A complete headache."
For most of us in the industry, the benefits of global events outweigh the challenges. And for clients, the opportunity to open a window on the world without having to leave the country becomes suddenly present.
When I returned to my hotel after watching the pregame Iraq rally, I saw two men have an emotional reunion in my hotel lobby. They were best friends, one living in Virginia, the other, Baghdad. "We've been waiting for Iraq to return to the World Cup since 1986," the man from Virginia said, his eyes welling up. "You have no idea what this means to us."