The number of foreign travelers staying at Chicago hotels has declined over the past year amid tensions between the Trump administration and other nations, hospitality experts say, while high fuel prices and other economic uncertainties have hurt U.S. travelers.
But hoteliers say they already see signs that Chicago will enjoy a healthy summer tourist season. That’s mostly thanks to a densely packed calendar of events and concerts including Lollapalooza, Pokémon Go Fest and the June 19 debut of the long-awaited Obama Presidential Center on the South Side.
“We’ve got these disruptions out there including the Iran war and high oil prices,” said Maverick Hotels and Restaurants CEO Robert Habeeb, the proprietor of several Chicago hotels, including the 223-room Sable at Navy Pier. “But (Chicago’s) events calendar has always been its best feature, and even though our first quarter was a bit slow, we had a great April, and our advance bookings look pretty good for all segments.”
Except for the four-day Lollapalooza, which opens July 30 in Grant Park, Chicago doesn’t have any truly blockbuster concert events such as Taylor Swift or Beyoncé, both of whom sold out multiple nights at Soldier Field in previous years.
Grant Park also won’t hear the roars of NASCAR’s Chicago Street Race, a two-day extravaganza, now on a one-year hiatus, that filled the lakefront and downtown hotels in 2025.
But Habeeb said Chicago — especially its lakefront — is so attractive to tourists that other events such as the Pokémon Go Fest, which kicked off in Grant Park on Friday, the Chicago Blues Festival, also this weekend, and the city’s many neighborhood festivals, should make up for Taylor Swift’s absence.
“Even without the Swifties, we’re able to fill in the blanks pretty handily,” he said. “We’ve realized we don’t need the biggest events like the (Democratic National Convention) or NASCAR.”
Pokémon Go Fest is a citywide event, based on the Pokémon Go online mobile game, where thousands of players will attempt to catch 3D computer graphic characters that pop up throughout Chicago.
The Chicago event is the only Pokémon Go Fest in North America this year, said Divya Erram, Pokémon’s global live events manager. She expects each day will draw around 30,000 players, who will fan out across the city, visiting Grant Park, libraries, museums, parks, Lincoln Park Zoo, Rate Field and many other attractions.
Go Fest is a perfect vehicle for tourism, she said, because roughly 70% of the Pokémon players will be from outside the Chicago region, and the online game participants typically visit out-of-the-way neighborhoods in whichever city hosts the festival.
“It’s a complete city takeover,” Erram said. “You have to go to new places and explore to truly experience the game. Chicago is also a homecoming for us because the very first Go Fest was at Grant Park in 2017. It’s no surprise we’ve come back because Chicago is in the center of the country, so it’s very accessible, and it’s also a walkable city with great summertime weather.”
Chicago-area hotels are already seeing more activity this year than they did in 2025, the healthiest year for area hotels since the pandemic. Average room occupancy for the Chicago region stood at 58.1% by the end of April, up from 55.4% last April, according to CoStar.
Many hotel guests also seem willing to pay more. Hotel owners on average earned $83.02 per available room through April, up from $78.17 for the same time last year, a 6.2% bump, according to CoStar.
“That’s certainly a good start to the year,” said Jan Freitag, national director of hospitality analytics for CoStar.
Choose Chicago, the city’s tourism agency, reported 11.9 million hotel bookings in 2025, nearly equal to the record-breaking year of 2019, and some developers say the market is now strong enough to justify building new hotels, especially downtown.
Michael Reschke, CEO of The Prime Group, who along with Capri Investment Group Chairman Quintin Primo leads the redevelopment of the James R. Thompson Center, said the city draws nearly as many annual tourists as New York City, but only has about 48,000 hotel rooms compared with New York’s 125,000.
“Our ratio of hotel rooms to the number of tourists is one of the lowest in the U.S.,” he said. “When there is a big convention in town, the city is sold out. It’s not good for the convention business because who wants to stay in the suburbs and get on a bus to fight traffic for an hour or more to get to the convention?”
Reschke and Primo won approval on May 12 from the Community Development Commission to replace vacant office space in 111 W. Monroe St., a 1911 landmark and former home of Harris Trust & Savings Bank, with 308 hotel rooms and a refurbished penthouse club, a $166 million project. Reschke also just took control of the historic Burnham Center one block south of the Thompson Center at 111 W. Washington St., and plans to convert that mostly vacant office building into another hotel.
But the news isn’t all good, Freitag said. Last summer hotel owners noted a significant decline in overseas visitors, especially Canadians, and that’s continued into 2026. Rising fuel prices, persistent inflation and higher labor costs have also squeezed some Chicago hotels, especially those serving travelers with less money to spend.
“Higher costs are keeping a lot of owners up at night,” Freitag said. “They feel the pinch, but the upper end of the market is doing quite a bit better because luxury travelers are willing to pay high room rates for a luxury experience. If you’re a luxury hotel, you’re doing pretty well and you’re going to continue to do well.”
Daniel Grajdura, the area director of sales and marketing for The Godfrey, a 221-room hotel at 127 W. Huron St. in River North, and Le Méridien Essex, a 15-story hotel at 800 S. Michigan Ave. in the South Loop, said he’s not too worried about losing some international travelers.
He said he expects fans of music groups such as Foo Fighters and the K-pop band BTS, both playing at Soldier Field in August, along with thousands of visitors attending conventions at McCormick Convention Center, will help fill downtown hotels throughout the summer.
“International travel is down, and that does affect Chicago because we are an international city, but every week in the summer there is something happening on the lakefront and there is also always something happening at the convention center,” Grajdura said. “Domestic travel is holding its own, and we are on the same pace as last year in terms of occupancy, and maybe a little bit ahead.”
More than 1.7 million people are expected to attend McCormick Center events in 2026, according to the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, the municipal corporation also known as McPier, which owns McCormick Center. That’s still below prepandemic numbers, when the venue typically attracted between more than 2 million annual visitors.
But some conventions are approaching prepandemic records, said McPier CEO Larita Clark. The International Manufacturing Technology Show attracted almost 90,000 visitors in 2024, its last Chicago event, compared with the more than 100,000 seen pre-COVID. The show returns to McCormick Center later this month.
“They’ve made it their goal, their mission, to get back to 100,000 and exceed that,” Clark said.
And the four-story Obama Presidential Center museum and surrounding campus in Jackson Park will likely be popular with McCormick Center visitors who want to escape for a few hours, making it easier to draw even more conventions.
“Event organizers are always looking for something new and exciting here in Chicago,” she said. “It is getting folks to the point where they are ready to book a convention so they can see what it’s all about.”
Choose Chicago considers the Obama center a chance to bring more visitors to the South Side, an area often neglected by tourists, said Chief Marketing Officer Lisa Nucci.
The agency announced in May that Big Bus Tours Chicago will start operating a downtown shuttle service on June 19 to the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry and the Obama center.
“I think they’re going to be a real dynamic duo,” said Nucci. “Any time a big destination or a big museum opens up we see a big jump in travel.”
The Sophy Hyde Park, a 98-room boutique hotel, opened in Hyde Park eight years ago in anticipation of the Obama center, said Director of Sales and Marketing Ivy McQueen. Now that the center is finally open, the hotel plans to push the neighborhood as a viable vacation spot, and encourage visitors to the nearby University of Chicago or emerging Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park to extend their stays.
“That wasn’t easy to sell before the presidential center was here,” McQueen said. “I think we’re all going to witness the blossoming of the South Side. There are so many seeds being planted.”
