Sports tourism provides winning opportunities for hoteliers
Sports tourism provides winning opportunities for hoteliers
North America has $8.1 billion in summer travel spend up for grabs, Expedia says
The 2026 FIFA World Cup is just weeks away, and Expedia Group's new report found that North America has $8.1 billion in tourism spend up for grabs this summer. (Getty Images)
https://www.costar.com/article/258701903/sports-tourism-provides-winning-opportunities-for-hoteliers?
Experience-led travel is driving growth across the hotel industry, and sports tourism is a huge component of that momentum — especially this year with North America hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
"Fans are not just booking for the soccer match itself or for the event itself," said Brandon Ehrhardt, vice president of marketing for travel partners and advertisers at Expedia Group, on a recent episode of the CoStar News Hotels podcast. "They're designing an entire trip around that, and that's been a significant change we've seen."
Expedia Group partnered with event intelligence platform PredictHQ to study intent to travel demand in the tournament's host markets between June and August of this year. The report found that total traveler spend across these markets will exceed $8.1 billion — a $750 million increase year over year, Ehrhardt said.
On the hotelier side of things, "the piece of that pie is about $4.8 billion," he said, adding that represents an 86% increase from last year.
"What this is going to do is create an opportunity for a lot of hoteliers who may not think of themselves as the ground zero for World Cup lodging accommodations to win additional traffic because we see people coming, staying for longer ... willing to explore outside of that city," Ehrhardt said.
The general trends in the Expedia report are longer length of stays and booking growth in "spillover markets" adjacent to host cities, with some markets seeing significant year-over-year growth.
"What we see rather consistently is if you look at the host city, outside of that, there is a ring of demand that hoteliers are capturing today," Ehrhardt said.
Beyond this year's World Cup, fan-driven experiences will continue to grow travel. Ehrhardt said throughout this summer, he's going to continue to keep an eye out for how the length of stay continues to trend up, the growth of value-driven travel, and continued booking increases in the nearby markets.
"Sports events travel is here to stay," he said. "I think we'll start talking a bit more about this being experience-led travel as we advance, and the window of opportunity for hoteliers will be before, during, and after the event — and it will encompass the areas that are around the host city as well, so there's definitely some things I have some eyes on."
Hilton builds on hotel openings momentum in the Caribbean and Latin America
Brand company has over 150 hotels under design and construction in the region
In 2025, Hilton crossed the threshold of more than 300 hotels open in the Caribbean and Latin America. The Waldorf Astoria Costa Rica Punta Cacique opened in Costa Rica in September 2025. (Hilton)
https://www.costar.com/article/1701942650/hilton-builds-on-hotel-openings-momentum-in-caribbean-latin-america?
By Bryan Wroten
CORAL GABLES, Florida — Hilton saw record expansion in the Caribbean and Latin America region in 2025.
“It has set a momentum for us to continue that path moving forward,” said Pablo Maturana, Hilton's vice president of development and architecture, construction and design for the Caribbean and Latin America, in an interview at the American Lodging Investment Summit CALA.
Hilton crossed the threshold of having more than 300 hotels open in the region, he said. On top of that, Hilton has more than 150 hotels under design and construction as well. Both are signs of success for the company's multi-brand approach to the Caribbean and Latin America, he said.
Among its milestones last year, Hilton debuted its Tru by Hilton brand in Chile and introduced its first Hilton hotel in the U.S. Virgin Islands with the Hampton by Hilton St. Thomas. The Spark by Hilton brand is also now a player in CALA.
From a new deals standpoint, Hilton has had a strong year, particularly on the luxury side, Maturana said. Hilton opened the Waldorf Astoria Costa Rica Punta Cacique, and it has approved four hotels under its luxury brands as it continues to grow through its partnership with Small Luxury Hotels of the World. There’s the Waldorf Astoria Turks and Caicos, a Conrad by Hilton in Nima, a Conrad by Hilton in Monterrey and an LXR in Costa Rica.
Hilton has also started construction of the Waldorf Astoria property San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, he added.
During the first quarter of this year, Hilton has opened five hotels in CALA, “proving the point that what we have done over this year has set up for continuous growth throughout the continent,” he said.
The CALA region is important to Hilton in part because that’s where the company’s global expansion started, Maturana said. In 1949, the first hotel Hilton opened outside of the mainland U.S. was the Caribe Hilton in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
“Since then, I would say that the Caribbean and Latin America have always played a strategic role in our expansion efforts,” he said.
The Caribbean and Latin America comprises multiple different markets, each with their own growth and demand drivers, Maturana said. That means one solution doesn’t fit all situations, so that’s why Hilton uses a multi-brand approach to pair the right brand with the right market with the right partner.
People tend to talk about CALA as one unified area when it’s a multi-country region with different needs, he said. To succeed, a hotel company needs to divide its approach geographically to capture all the opportunities. The bottom line is that with a region that has around 650 million to 700 million people, there’s a lot of potential, he added.
Hilton is investing in Brazil and Mexico as they are the largest markets in Latin America geographically, Maturana said. They have a tremendous amount of opportunity because of the depth of their hotel demand drivers, their connectivity and their growing middle class and domestic markets.
“That obviously creates a platform for us to continue growing from a geographic perspective and capitalizing opportunities throughout the Caribbean, throughout Central America, and the Andean region,” he said.
From a segment perspective, the shorter-term growth will come from focused-service and full-service hotels while Hilton eyes deliberate growth in the resort and luxury space, Maturana said. The all-inclusive space, where Hilton has operated for a while, is creating potential for continued growth.
“If you couple all-inclusives with good distribution systems, et cetera, it is an accelerator of growth for us in the Caribbean and Latin America,” he said.
But the strategy with all-inclusive resorts isn’t simple, Maturana said. It’s about filling in gaps between distribution and commercial marketing as well as differentiating oneself and having operational expertise.
“It is a competitive environment, but also it is an environment where, when you are able to differentiate yourself from a product perspective, from an operational expert perspective, there's great opportunities for a brand like Hilton,” he said.
The network effect generates awareness of the brand in the region, making customers more familiar with Hilton if they travel to other parts of the globe as well.
“It’s almost like a disproportionate benefit from the actual growth we’re seeing in the region,” he said.
Hotel owners in the Caribbean and Latin America are telling Hilton they’re seeing the benefits from the distribution system and a lower cost of guest acquisition, Maturana said. Having the different brands available gives owners the flexibility they need to adapt to market conditions. At the same time, having operations at the local level allows them to cater to the needs of their guests.
Overall, this approach has proven to drive cash-on-cash returns on hotel owners' investments, Maturana said.
“We always measure what we're doing, and don't get me wrong, market share is important, but as important as market share is, [so is] building the relationships,” he said. “Building those relationships, when they will repeat it, proves that you're having the right type of growth in in the region, and we're seeing a lot of repeat owners.”
Hilton is seeing some traction with hotel conversion opportunities, Maturana said. Along with using its conversion-oriented brands that are more nimble and agile, such as Curio Collection or Tapestry Collection, it’s also finding success with some of its brands in higher segments, such as DoubleTree by Hilton.
Although the hotel development environment is challenging, Hilton is seeing a lot of new construction come to the market, he said. At a global level, one in every five hotel rooms under construction carries a Hilton brand. It’s also the brand with the most hotels under construction currently.
The growth Hilton has achieved and is achieving in the Caribbean and Latin America is done by leveraging its local team and local expertise, Maturana said.
“When you look at our developer, our development team is all built on people from the region with expertise in the region,” he said. “The same occurs when you go to the architectural design and construction team.
“People from the region with experience throughout the region who are also based in the region, therefore are constantly looking at these opportunities for growth,” he said.
HackerOne CEO Kara Sprague on how AI is reshaping cybersecurity
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-technology/our-insights/hackerone-ceo-kara-sprague-on-how-ai-is-reshaping-cybersecurity?
Kara Sprague is the CEO of HackerOne. Martin Harrysson is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Bay Area office.
HackerOne CEO Kara Sprague discusses how AI is reshaping the cybersecurity landscape and why security teams must shift from finding vulnerabilities to reducing exposure.
As frontier AI models—the most advanced generation of AI systems—make cyberattacks faster and more sophisticated, organizations are increasingly turning to companies such as HackerOne to enhance their defenses. In a conversation with McKinsey Senior Partner Martin Harrysson, HackerOne CEO Kara Sprague explored how AI is changing the risk landscape and why the real challenge is no longer finding vulnerabilities but remediating them before attackers can act.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Martin Harrysson: We are at a moment where AI is reshaping many parts of technology. How did you enter the technology field, and what is structurally different in cybersecurity today compared with before the rise of AI?
Kara Sprague: I started my career at McKinsey, advising clients across the tech stack, then moved into industry at F5, which focuses on application delivery and security. Now I’m CEO of HackerOne, working with some of the world’s biggest companies to find and fix security weaknesses before they can be exploited.
Today, we’re seeing three things happening at once. First, the attack surface is growing because more AI models and systems are being deployed across more enterprises, and AI code generation is accelerating the pace at which companies build and deploy software. Second, that attack surface is more vulnerable because security for AI deployments is still nascent, and AI-generated code still tends to be less secure than human-generated code. And third, attackers are getting more capable because they are quickly adopting and weaponizing frontier AI capabilities.
Defense is behind, and it will take time to catch up. Enterprise security operations will have to retool for speed. And that’s not just about adopting new technology. It’s about rethinking the operating model, talent, and governance. The find-to-fix workflow has to be reimagined with AI at the forefront.
Martin Harrysson: Should leaders see the current landscape as a step change in risk or an acceleration of existing trends?
Kara Sprague: I would call it an acceleration of trends that have been visible for some time. The time between vulnerability discovery and exploitation, for example, has been steadily decreasing from over two years in 2018 to less than a day today.1
What feels new in recent weeks, following Anthropic’s early April announcement of Mythos,2 is the step change in cyber-specific capabilities. Models can now build effective exploits that chain multiple vulnerabilities together, meaning even unsophisticated attackers can identify and target critical issues.
Martin Harrysson: The compression in timelines and the emergence of new attack vectors is significant. How well are organizations keeping up?
Kara Sprague: At HackerOne, we have a broad view across the market because we work with close to 20 percent of the Fortune 500 and almost 40 percent of the Fortune 50. What we’re seeing across our platform is that vulnerability reports have increased 76 percent year on year.3 You might assume those reports are just more noise—what some refer to as “AI slop.” We have seen that in the past, but that’s not what we’re seeing now. The signal—the share of reports that turn into valid findings—has held steady, which means the increase is reflected in real vulnerabilities as well.
Defenders are struggling to keep up with threats. Backlogs are growing. The gap between new threats and the ability to respond is still measured in months, and sometimes years.
It really depends on how quickly security organizations are able to retool their operations for speed. There are emerging blueprints for what that looks like—for example, the Cloud Security Alliance’s recent work on building Mythos-ready security operations4—but closing that gap will require significant changes to how organizations operate.
Martin Harrysson: In practical terms, what steps can organizations take to bridge the defense gap you’re outlining?
Kara Sprague: To meet this surge in AI-led vulnerability discovery, we need to meaningfully accelerate validation and remediation at scale.
At HackerOne, we’re investing in helping organizations overcome a few bottlenecks. First, agentic testing capabilities that incorporate the latest frontier models can find the same vulnerabilities that adversaries using models such as Claude Opus and Mythos would find—but agentic testing does it sooner. Second, agentic validation capabilities will be needed to absorb the coming surge in vulnerability volume while maintaining high signal rates. And third is remediation support—helping organizations move from finding the problem to implementing a verified fix faster and at scale.
Human expertise is critical for implementing these capabilities successfully. At HackerOne, nearly 90 percent of our global community of security researchers uses frontier models to find novel and elusive issues, and they test fixes to ensure they fully remediate exposure.
Martin Harrysson: To your point on the researcher community, how do you see the role of human researchers evolving as AI becomes more capable?
Kara Sprague: Human researchers are shifting from manual bug hunting to higher-level, more strategic work. AI is taking over the discovery of common, high-volume vulnerabilities, while researchers are increasingly focused on building tools and systems that use AI to find deeper, more complex issues such as logic flaws, architectural weaknesses, and novel attack paths.
You can compare autonomous code fixes to self-driving cars: For critical systems, the tolerance for error is essentially zero. Although AI can reliably propose fixes in greenfield projects, it cannot safely untangle complex, legacy architectural issues. Fixing these systems requires expert human oversight.
Ultimately, this evolution will lead to the market placing a much higher premium on identifying complex, high-impact vulnerabilities and guiding critical fixes while decreasing the payouts for lower-complexity issues handled autonomously by AI.
Martin Harrysson: Where do organizations tend to break down as vulnerability discovery accelerates? What does it take to prioritize and act effectively?
Kara Sprague: Organizations tend to break down at the handoff points. The typical workflow—finding an issue, filing a ticket, triaging, prioritizing, and patching—involves multiple handoffs, which create backlogs of work waiting to be processed. Those backlogs don’t hold up under volume. The organizations that perform well are the ones that shorten or minimize those handoffs and ensure findings arrive with enough context.
This is tricky. As the pace of discovery and exploitation accelerates, traditional boundaries between AppSec, DevOps, and SecOps5 become harder to sustain. Separating these functions also creates additional handoffs across teams, slowing response times. Instead, organizations may move toward more integrated workflows with shared data and priorities. Over time, this could mean shifting security from a separate function that inspects software after it is built to something embedded directly into how software is developed and run.
Martin Harrysson: Given those challenges around data, tooling, and organizational alignment, what will separate the organizations that get this right from those that don’t?
Kara Sprague: The biggest difference will be how quickly organizations can clear their backlogs and the extent to which they can compress their find-to-fix workflows. Many are still operating as if they have time between when a vulnerability is discovered and when it is exploited—but with AI, that time is gone.
Organizations that get this right treat it as a time-based problem. Those that fall behind are still managing volume—generating more findings than they can act on. This is where prioritization is important. Traditional vulnerability scoring systems provide a standardized view of severity, but they do not reflect actual risk in a specific environment. The same vulnerability can have very different implications depending on whether an asset is internet-facing, what data it processes, and what controls are in place around it.
Effective prioritization depends on context—combining an understanding of the asset, how a vulnerability can be exploited, and the organization’s capacity to remediate. Without that, even well-identified vulnerabilities can be prioritized incorrectly.
In the end, the advantage won’t go to the organization that finds the most vulnerabilities, but to the one that can reduce its risk exposure the fastest.
This Popular Asian Country Is Slashing Visa-Free Stays for Americans
Fokke Baarssen/Shutterstock
https://www.fodors.com/news/photos/this-popular-asian-country-is-slashing-visa-free-stays-for-americans
And other travel news you may have missed.
This week in travel, we have several stories that may have flown under your radar. Among them: Thailand is reducing visa-free stays for many countries, including the U.S.; an EasyJet flight was diverted after a passenger left a power bank charging in their checked luggage; a United flight was diverted due to an unruly passenger; and a turbulent flight injured passengers and resulted in hospitalization.
Dive into these and more as we examine the latest in travel news.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF CATHAY PACIFIC AIRWAYS
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Eight Passengers Hospitalized After Turbulence on Cathay Pacific Flight
A Cathay Pacific flight traveling from Brisbane, Australia, to Hong Kong experienced severe turbulence that injured 10 people on board, including six cabin crew members and four passengers. Eight people were hospitalized.
A passenger on the flight said that it felt like the plane just dropped. Nicholas Stevenson told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that the turbulence was sudden and sent phones, coffee, and food everywhere. People also hit the roof. “The first one caught everyone completely off guard, and then probably 15 or 20 seconds later it happened again.”
The flight crew got the worst of it. They had just started tea and coffee service, and they were thrown as food carts smashed into them, too. Fortunately, there were four doctors on board who assisted the injured, and the flight continued to Hong Kong.
Stevenson also said the pilot apologized, and after they landed, the injured were deboarded first.
PHOTO: COWARDLION/SHUTTERSTOCK
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Thailand Tightens Tourist Visa-Free Entry for Americans
Thailand has finally had enough of tourists behaving poorly. The country, which relaxed entry rules in 2024 after COVID decimated tourism, is limiting visa-free stays to 30 days from 60 days. Visitors from the U.S., along with 53 other countries, will only be able to stay half as long as in previous years.
Travelers from France, Japan, Germany, and Singapore will also be impacted by this rule change. It is being reported that the government is concerned about unauthorized businesses being run by foreigners. The policy will go into effect 15 days after it is published in The Royal Gazette.
The country welcomed almost 33 million visitors last year. Authorities have also been dealing with poor behavior by foreigners, including bar fights and performing sexual acts publicly.
PHOTO: CARLOS FLORENTIN/SHUTTERSTOCK
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Australian Falls to Death While Hiking Machu Picchu
An Australian tourist fell into a ravine while hiking a difficult part of the Inca Trail in Peru and tragically died. Matthew Paton fell on Wednesday, and his body was found the next day. He was a sergeant with Victoria Police and was traveling with his wife when he fell about 1,000 feet through a broken railing while crossing a bridge. They had arrived in Cusco 12 days earlier and were on a four-day hike with a group and a guide.
Victoria Police said that Paton loved traveling and exploring historic sites. “His colleagues and the entire policing family are devastated at the tragic loss of a wonderful, caring person.”
His family said that he always wanted to go to Peru and even learned Spanish for it. Family members were also on their way to Peru.
PHOTO: ADAM KLIS/ISTOCK
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EasyJet Flight Diverts Due to Power Bank
An EasyJet flight from Hurghada, Egypt, to London diverted to Rome after a passenger informed the flight crew that they had left a power bank charging a device in their checked luggage. As a precautionary measure, the pilot decided to divert the plane three hours into the flight.
Power banks pose a fire hazard on planes, and multiple airlines around the world have banned their usage in the air. They are not allowed in checked baggage.
EasyJet said in a statement that the captain “took the decision to divert as a precaution in line with safety regulations. The aircraft landed safely, passengers disembarked routinely, and we provided hotel accommodation and meals where available. As some customers remained in the airport, they were provided with refreshments.”
PHOTO: UNITED AIRLINES
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United Flight Diverts After Unruly Passenger Tries to Open Door
A United flight from Newark to Guatemala City was diverted after an unruly passenger tried to open a door mid-air. The flight had 145 passengers and six flight crew members, and it was diverted to Washington Dulles “after the crew reported a passenger disturbance,” the Federal Aviation Administration said.
An air traffic control officer is recorded asking, “Which door did the passenger try to open?” A crew member replies, “Door 2L at 36,000 feet, and then assaults a fellow passenger.
The flight landed safely, with law enforcement meeting the plane. The airline gave overnight accommodation to passengers who flew to their destination the next morning.
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