WSB: Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau report that hotel bookings did not live up to the impact predictions that the FIFA World Cup would bring

Among some of the great content that came out of the FIFA World Cup, I particularly liked the local Atlanta material, about foreign visitors’ experiences in the Metro.  I really enjoyed videos about witnessing people wandering around in the hoods of College Park, the West End and East Atlanta, looking absolutely petrified at just how hood some of these neighborhoods were capable of being.

It’s obvious that they chose these areas because they were MARTA accessible, and they figured that instead of staying within a mile radius of The Benz and get gauged to death, they’d stay a little bit further out for less, but it’s aight because we got train access.

I’d never seen so many the sax is getting louder memes in such a short time, but they’ve all been entertaining to me, especially when I recognized some of the places of some of the videos.

But getting back to the article here, it brings me great satisfaction to see all the L’s the city is taking in regards to expected hotel occupancy versus what had actually happened.  It’s not that I want to see Atlanta getting laughed at by the rest of the world, but I’m diametrically opposed to flagrant price gauging and any act of trying to turn screws to the people of the world, that I feel like quantifiable evidence of failure like this is necessary in order for any sort of course correction to happen.

It’s pretty great:

FIFA once promised an impact equal to eight Super Bowls.

But then the numbers start coming in, and tax revenue, hotel occupancy and hotel occupancy within a 1-mile radius are all in the negatives, and it’s just one of those smug, gee, tf did you think was going to happen when you ask people to pay thousands of dollars to fly to Atlanta, thousands more dollars to get tickets into the matches, and think that they’d still have thousands of dollars left over to stay in overpriced hotels?

I especially like the Ls that all the nearby hotels took, because firstly, they’re all of the luxury, high-end name brands, of W, the Four Seasons, the Ritz Carlton, and then all the Dragon-con hotels that are all perpetually overpriced all the time.  They should be the least surprised that people who were dumping their life savings into these trips would prioritize lodging the last versus logistics and match tickets.

I am surprised to see that the general, umbrella Metro Atlanta hotel occupancy also remained in the negatives, which means that probably the AirBnB and short-term rental markets probably did gangbusters throughout the World Cup’s tenure in Atlanta, or perhaps people were staying in places like Newnan, Woodstock, Braselton and the way the fuck outskirts that might not fall into the Metro umbrella.

Either way, chalk this up as some satisfying tea to indulge in, because as much as I love sports, the politics that go behind it are as much full of shit as the nonsense that endlessly churns up in Washington DC.