The World Cup’s most obvious winners in Canada will be downtown hotels and restaurants. The less obvious risks, Maruf Hasan (pictured) says, will show up in suburban basements, outer‑ring dining rooms and liability policies that were never designed for this kind of crowd.
Hasan, senior vice president and director of underwriting at CHES Special Risk, expects a surge of short‑term rentals around Toronto and Vancouver as homeowners try to cash in on the 2026 tournament. Platforms are already dangling incentives.
“Even I have seen an advertisement that if someone is going to start an Airbnb now, just before the World Cup, Airbnb will pay them $1,100 as an incentive,” he said. “What does it tell you? A lot of new entrants should be there.”
He’s thinking about ordinary homeowners on the fringes of Toronto and Vancouver who decide to turn spare space into short‑term accommodation for the tournament – for example, someone who has never rented out their basement but, seeing the surge in demand, suddenly lists it as an Airbnb for a few weeks.
Most of those new hosts, he argued, “have no experience.” They haven’t run a rental, managed guests from multiple countries or thought through what happens if a visitor is injured on the property. In many cases they won’t have the right insurance.
“Here the insurance brokers have to really advise them,” he said, including pushing them to hire a property manager to run the operation properly. For Hasan, that’s not a luxury. A professionally managed short‑term rental is less likely to mishandle crowds, breach local rules or generate claims that a standard homeowner policy might not respond to.
The distortions won’t stop at city limits. If World Cup demand concentrates in the Greater Toronto Area and Vancouver’s core, he said, restaurants and bars in surrounding communities may be left with quieter rooms just as they were counting on summer trade.
Activity and spending will cluster around the stadiums and downtown cores, which means other areas could see trade fall away. Locals who might usually eat out in places like Milton could instead head into the city during the tournament, while visiting fans will want to stay close enough to travel easily to matches rather than booking too far out.
For inner‑ring businesses, the risk is overload: too many people, too few trained staff, and services stretched thin. For outer‑ring operators, the risk is the opposite: a temporary revenue dip and cash‑flow squeeze, even without a physical loss.
Hasan thinks both sides need to reassess their risk. Core‑area hotels, restaurants and short‑term rentals should be raising stock and liability limits and considering specialist covers. Operators outside the core may need to think harder about business interruption and how a mega‑event in the city can depress trade even when nothing happens to their own premises.
The common thread is crowds. “In today’s world, there is always a fear of terrorism. Something goes wrong when there is a large crowd of people,” he said. “As we see, a lot of things are happening around the world now. So it’s quite an unsettling situation.”
He worries that hospitality businesses remain anchored to what landlords or lenders mandate – often a $2 million liability limit – rather than what a World Cup crowd can actually produce in claims if something goes wrong in, or near, their premises.
“Most of the restaurants will buy a two-million-dollar liability limit,” he said. “For such a mega event, if something goes wrong, two million may not be enough.”
On top of that, he thinks terrorism cover should be on the table for hotels and restaurants. “We never know if something could go wrong. Terrorism insurance is really needed for the hotels and restaurants.”
Hasan is careful to point out that managing general agents like CHES can’t sell directly to the public or give retail advice. That puts the burden on brokers to connect owners’ plans with the realities of the tournament.
If a broker has clients that may be swept up in the event – “Toronto or GTA restaurants, hotels, same as Vancouver” – he wants them to call underwriters and pressure‑test current structures.
Outside pure insurance, he’s also looking at reputation. Poorly run Airbnbs and over‑stretched restaurants risk more than just a bad night. “If they fail to provide the service that our tourists and visitors are expecting, that’s again a loss for them for future,” he said.
