Opinion: To help the outer boroughs, keep World Cup tourists in hotels

At a recent press conference, Mayor Zohran Mamdani laid out an important goal for the World Cup: making sure the city drives visitors, and real economic activity, into the outer boroughs. As a City Council member representing communities in Queens, I couldn’t agree more. We now have a rare chance to deliver meaningful economic benefits to outer borough communities. But that will only happen if we support the businesses and their workers that make up the tourism economy – like our hotels, the backbone of that ecosystem.

There are big stakes. The hotel industry has lost thousands of jobs over the last few years, and there has been a painful dip in tourism. If we get the World Cup wrong, we further risk the livelihoods of more than 40,000 predominantly union and immigrant hotel workers, many of whom live in my district, and the broader 400,000-person hospitality workforce that hotels support, plus billions in tax revenue for essential city services.

This is why I strongly oppose multibillion-dollar Airbnb’s proposal to roll back the city’s historic regulations on short-term rentals, Local Law 18, for the duration of the World Cup.

Many of the roughly 300 smaller hotels located primarily in the outer boroughs are still struggling to recover from the losses of COVID-19. They are grappling with the same affordability crisis facing all New Yorkers, compounded by inflation, tariffs and rising operating costs. A prolonged slowdown in tourism, especially of international visitors who spend more, has only made matters worse, pushing some of these businesses closer to the brink. These hotels need every opportunity to benefit from the World Cup, not new policies that siphon off visitors.

Airbnb doesn’t care about New Yorkers or our economy. Their goal is simply to boost their own profits at the expense of our tourism economy, housing and city revenue. And as usual, they are backing that push with deep pockets, including a $1 million contribution to the New York/New Jersey FIFA host committee and hundreds of thousands more to cultivate political support. The company argues that giving this proposal the go-ahead will address a supposed lack of hotel capacity and provide tourists with a more affordable option while helping homeowners. None of these arguments hold up.

First, our hotel sector is more than capable of handling World Cup visitors, just as it does every year for major events like the U.S. Open in Queens. In fact, the real issue right now isn’t a shortage of rooms, but a shortage of bookings. Hotel bookings for the tournament period are currently trailing last year’s levels during a typical summer. FIFA has already begun releasing unused room blocks due to lower-than-expected demand. That should fundamentally shift this debate. If we’re not filling the hotel rooms we already have, it makes no sense to create new incentives that pull visitors away from them.

While hotel rates initially spiked after New York was announced as a host city, prices are already coming down and are expected to decline even further. In these situations, large luxury hotels in Manhattan may weather the storm, but smaller properties in Queens and other outer boroughs, and the workers they employ, are far more vulnerable. 

Suspending Local Law 18 won’t help homeowners or our city’s housing crisis either. My constituent homeowners, who spent decades working to move into the quiet residential neighborhoods I represent, have serious safety and quality of life concerns about letting an influx of tourists stay in unregulated short-term rentals nearby. Short-term renters have been known to bring excessive noise and host raucous parties, which would likely be the case for World Cup revelers.  

What’s more, short-term renters won’t come close to making the same kind of economic impact on our borough that hotel guests would. Smaller, more affordable hotels helped spur Queens’ economic growth in areas like Long Island City and around our city’s major airports. But these  hotels are struggling, and World Cup guests would help them stay afloat. If we lose these guests to short-term rentals, we lose spending in the business districts where hotels are located. Without the boost from World Cup visitors, hardworking Queens residents would face job losses and diminished economic opportunities.

If we are serious about making the World Cup a success for all New Yorkers, the path forward is clear. We must support our hotels to ensure that tourism dollars reach the outer boroughs where potential gains are greatest. That means saying no to Airbnb and putting our hospitality industry and its workers at the center of our strategy.