How Los Angeles leverages global events into demand, hotel investment growth

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LOS ANGELES — For the next three years, Los Angeles will have the world’s attention as it takes center stage to host three of the world’s most prestigious sports events — NBA All-Star Game and FIFA World Cup in 2026™, Super Bowl LXI in 2027 and the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Near term, that unprecedented run in the global spotlight will keep Los Angeles top-of-mind for billions of online and digital viewers, generate at least hundreds of thousands of visitor arrivals and deliver a combined economic impact expected to exceed $12 billion for Los Angeles County.

But that’s just for openers. It’s the extended potential of leveraging these events as showcases for Los Angeles’s citywide transformation and integrating them into an overall sports event strategy that will make these and other marquee competitions demand and investment drivers for the long term.

Hotel Investment Today recently brought together the leaders making these changes happen for an in-depth look at how the city’s steady cadence of stellar sports events is building a layered, resilient demand profile that is reshaping LA’s hospitality landscape.

Sharing their insights on how this influences the hotel investment decision were: Adam Burke, President & CEO, Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board (LA Tourism), Jason Krutzsch, Vice President, Marketing & Communications, Los Angeles Sports & Entertainment Commission (LASEC), Courtney Moore, Deputy Executive Director, Strategy, Innovation & Experience, Los Angeles World Airports, Adolfo Romero, Vice President, Programming and Booking, SoFi Stadium and Hollywood Park and Stephanie Wiggins, CEO, LA Metro. Mary Scoviak, Custom and Design Content Director, Hotel Investment Today by Northstar, moderated the discussion. LA Tourism was the topic sponsor for this virtual webinar.

How events level the playing field

As the first half of 2025 demonstrated, Los Angeles, like major cities around the world, needs a diverse portfolio of layered demand generators that can heighten the uplift of winning an Olympic bid or support residents and businesses in the wake of devastating wildfires.

“If you look at some of the challenges we faced over the last few years, you can easily see that LA Tourism has to have enough arrows in its quiver so that we can very quickly pivot and deploy programming against particular markets and particular segments to maintain steady demand generation throughout,” said Burke.

He added, “From a hotel investment and operations perspective, it's not just about today or tomorrow. It's about the next five, 10, 20 years and beyond. Los Angeles is very fortunate to have so many demand levers that, no matter what's happening globally, geopolitically or economically, we can shift to maintain demand and continue to grow RevPAR.”

Burke pointed out that LA’s demonstrated appeal as a host city for top sports events created a through-line that is already putting sought-after title competitions from men’s and women’s U.S. Opens to the 2031 Women’s World Soccer Cup on the city’s docket well into the next decade.

“Los Angeles is in a decade of unprecedented growth in sports. The governing bodies that continue to choose LA as a host city recognize the caliber of events we’re able to deliver,” said Burke. “Five years ago, Los Angeles didn’t even have a National Football League (NFL) team, let alone two. We now have 11 professional sports teams, the most of any city in the nation. We have state-of-the-art venues such as Sofi Stadium and Hollywood Park and now the Intuit Dome. With the prestige of hosting the FIFA World Cup 2026™, Super Bowl LXI and the Olympic and Paralympic games, Los Angeles now ranks as one of the world’s sports capitals. And that’s sustainable for the foreseeable future.”

Events as economic engines

Drilling down on that strategy, Krutzsch underscored the transformative impact of mega-events. “When you look at what 2022’s Super Bowl LVI did for Inglewood, or what the World Cup and Olympics will do for the region from 2026 through 2028, it’s clear these events are more than just spectacles — they’re economic engines,” he said.

Looking ahead, Krutzsch cited projections that FIFA World Cup 2026™ alone will deliver upwards of $600 million in economic and community impact for the Los Angeles region, as well as attracting roughly 180,000 visitors and contributing an estimated 330,000 hotel nights over baseline over the duration of the eight matches.

Beyond that, events on this level drive infrastructure investment, accelerate transit improvements and create new submarkets for hotel development.

From his perspective, the layering of events—from sports to entertainment to conventions — shapes a diversified demand stream that mitigates seasonality and supports a broader range of hotel products. “We’re seeing interest not just in luxury and lifestyle brands, but also in extended stay and select service models that cater to different traveler segments,” Krutzsch added.

Both Burke and Krutzsch stressed that the upside of events doesn’t stop at the investment phase. Their organizations are collaborating to pull through margin growth for the city’s current hoteliers.

“LA Tourism is working with LASEC to put together a 39-day calendar so that every single day of the tournament, there is something to do in every region of Los Angeles that includes watch parties, fan festivals and a host of activations,” said Burke. “So no matter what region your hotel is in, we're leveraging it during the 39 days of the tournament to ensure that we keep driving demand. But the long term is where these events can really make rain. In addition to introducing so many new visitors to destinations throughout the city, the visibility afforded by the ramp-up and actual competitions updates people's perceptions of the destination. If they haven't been here in a while, the campaigns around these events generate a long tail, capitalizing on that momentum to not only get further hotel development but also get visitors who came for the event to want to return and explore more places in the city.”

New venues as destination drivers

The development of SoFi Stadium and Hollywood Park not only gave Los Angeles a state-of-the-art stadium complex that helped win the city’s bid for Super Bowl LXI, it also provided impetus for development opportunities throughout the Inglewood area.

“We’ve created a 365-day-a-year destination,” said Romero, referencing the 298-acre development that includes SoFi Stadium, the YouTube Theater, and a growing portfolio of retail, residential, and entertainment assets. With over 2 million annual visitors driven by NFL games, global concert tours and large-scale festivals, the district has become a consistent generator of overnight demand.

Romero emphasized that this isn’t episodic traffic. “Events like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé aren’t just concerts—they’re economic catalysts,” he explains. More than half of ticket sales come from outside the LA metro, fueling hotel occupancy and rate growth across the LAX corridor and South Bay. The area’s infrastructure, originally built for mega-events like the Super Bowl, now supports a continuous stream of high-impact programming.

This demand is translating directly into hotel development. “We’re seeing major renovations and new builds, including our 300-room Cali Hotel opening next year within Hollywood Park,” Romero notes. Designed to serve both event-goers and business travelers, the hotel will anchor a new hospitality hub near the airport. Romero added that Hollywood Park has become more of a destination than simply a venue, strengthening its appeal for investors.

Airport improvements that drive business, international travel

When Moore talked about using “putting the LA back in LAX,” it wasn’t just a nice tagline. The multi-billion-dollar improvements go beyond renovation to transform how 77 million visitors access and navigate one of the world’s busiest airports – and how optimizing that experience can move the needle for business and high-spend international travelers. Comprehensive changes to vehicular traffic flow outside the terminals and pedestrian traffic within them are resolving long-term congestion challenges and reinforcing LAX’s role as a gateway to Los Angeles.

The unveiling of a new arrival and departure sequence redirects traffic away from the terminals with the 2026 launch of the Automated People Mover (APM). With a 10-minute end-to-end travel time, the APM links LAX terminals to a new consolidated car rental facility (which is the largest concrete structure in the U.S. after The Pentagon) and the LA Metro.

LAX’s comprehensive improvement to the Tom Bradley International Terminal equips Los Angeles with a meaningful differentiator to drive international arrivals even before the marquee events open. The first Midfield Satellite Concourse will be joined by a second, adding more gates and improving connectivity to other terminals. Burke added that the airport has also added service from eight new airlines in the past 24 months.

LA’s hoteliers won’t need to wait until 2028 or even 2026 to feel the impact: Burke noted that he’s already receiving enthusiastic feedback from meeting planners on LA Tourism's customer advisory board, as well as from association clients with significant international visitation.

Transit infrastructure expands the development map

For a city synonymous with car culture, the promise of a public transit infrastructure that supports LA28 underscores the fundamental evolution of one of the country’s most sprawling metro areas. Venues will draw visitors across the Greater Los Angeles area from Long Beach and Anaheim to DTLA, Inglewood, Pomona and Pasadena. While that will be a large-scale reveal for the LA Metro’s expansion to date, Wiggins is just as focused on bringing new stations online to support development long before and long after 2028. Three new DTLA stations debuted in 2023 to improve connectivity and put existing downtown hotels 15 – 20 minutes from popular destinations. The next chapter sees trains reach further outside of the city center than ever before.

“We're opening these investments now leading up to these major events,” said Wiggins. “The expansion of our transit network and the cultural destinations that remain post-event optimize the opportunities for investors near our future transit stations.” She also noted that the new stations are serving areas already replete with development opportunities. In the San Gabriel Valley, four new stations came online in June of 2025: Glendora, Pomona, La Verne and San Dimas. Westside will welcome three new stations before the end of 2025: Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax and Wilshire/La Cienega, with Beverly Dr and Century City slated for 2026 and Westwood/UCLA and Westwood/VA Hospital for 2027.

“We're all working in lockstep to make sure that we provide a seamless experience, when you come to LAX, which is going to be one of the world's premier aviation facilities,” said Burke. "We're rapidly expanding mass transit that is safe, comfortable, and provides an amazing experience, which means the best way to experience LA will be car free. And we have these world class venues and events coming that give developers sustainable demand for the next 10 to 15 years.”

Mary Scoviak is custom and design content director for Hotel Investment Today by Northstar.

The views and opinions expressed in this content do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hotel Investment Today by Northstar or Northstar Travel Group and its affiliated companies.